Rustic Euro
(mid april 2010. number one)
This was the first "official" Secret Restaurant Portland dinner.
The first time Andrew Barton and Lucas Winiarksi cooked for a group of people was New Year's Eve '09/'10. We started doing practice Secret Restaurant events every two weeks, sometimes once a week, from January through March of '10. At those dinners the service was more casual, the food often less thought out (sometimes favoring concept over quality– but it was good to get that out of our systems), and financed by Lucas's generosity. All those dinners were held knowing that in April we would "open" Secret Restaurant Portland and begin a "real" supper club.
The title of Rustic Euro was something we half-jokingly came up with to mean "The kind of food we are entirely likely to pull off– European flavors, Northwest ingredients, rustic but elegant appearance."
The Menu
• Dark walnut baguette/sourdough baguette/rustic potato round
served with :
Roasted garlic, melted cambozola cheese, and sautéed morel mushrooms.
Braised dino kale and northwest smoked salmon.
Oil and vinegar.
• Russian sorrel soup
Slow-roasted vegetable broth with sorrel, spring turnips, purple carrots and gold potatoes.
• Fresh egg pasta
Hand-made wide noodles topped with baked-(in butter and fresh sage)-then-flaked rainbow trout, topped with lavender/arugula pesto, along with a side of marinated & argyle-grilled eggplant.
• Ukranian almond poppy seed cake
Topped with fresh vanilla bean/ lavender water ice cream, tossed with lavender flowers. Garnished with a slice of tender spring turnip.
Beverages:
(from Jenny Mosbacher)
2004 Giuliano Tiberi Azienda Agricola, "Le Vespe", Sangiovese, Toscana IGT
Coming from just outside of the designated Chianti zone, and with 20% other indigenous blending grapes, the Le Vespe was a easy choice. Ruby red in color, the wine was full of classic Sangiovese flavors like red currant and sour cherries, with a little hint of coffee bean from it's French oak treatment.
2008 La Grange Tiphaine, "Les Cassiers," Gamay, Touraine-Amboise
Made as they would in Beaujolais, this Gamay from the Loire was given the carbonic maceration treatment with all stainless steel aging. Lots of juicy red fruit tempered by the mineral earthiness imparted from 50 year old vines grown in chalk and Silex soils.