Barleyswine

(not my picture)
We finally did it. I know they've been open for a year, but Greg and I had always promised that we'd go together. It took us this long to actually set a date and follow through with it.

Worth. The. Wait.

We had six people in our party, and our wait was right at an hour and a half. To kill time, we went over to La Feria for a margarita, some chips, and a sampler platter of taquitos, nachos, and jalapeño poppers - a truly great way to destroy your palette right before a great meal, but I digress!

Typically, they recommend that each diner order three entrées because their portions are quite modest. Thanks to our pre-gaming, we left quite content after seven entrées and two desserts between the six of us. Those guys are putting out some beautiful plates of food and they look even more beautiful than they taste (the plates of food, not the guys). I was able to resist the urge to photograph EVERY SINGLE PLATE of food that hit the table as that results in quite a bit of ribbing from fellow diners. I'll do my best to recall the plates. I should have taken a picture of the menu. Anyhow, the reason you're here: 9 plates of food

Grilled Pork Belly
We started with the off-the-menu item of grilled pork belly, grapefruit, peanuts, and brussels sprouts. The belly with the brussels and grapefruit was fantastic. There was a good bit of char on the pork and it contrasted nicely with the acid of the grapefruit. I found the peanuts superfluous. A great start.

Sunchoke Velouté
Next up was the other off-the-menu item: a soup made of sunchoke, with a slow cooked farm egg, salsify, goat cheese, and sunchoke chips. Their was a very pronounced cumin/curry flavor in there somewhere that, to my taste, overwhelmed the rest of the dish. Otherwise, I think it would have been pretty tasty.

Gulf Shrimp
This seemed to be the consensus favorite of the evening. Two, head-on, grilled gulf shrimp over hominy (with which I'm now in love), and a shrimp foam. This is one of the one's I wish I had photoed because with those shrimp heads poking up, it was gorgeous. I happily crunched the meat out of the face of that shrimp *droooool*. It was killer.

Spicy Goat
This plate resulted in mixed reviews, which was unfortunate because it may have been my most anticipated dish. I was hoping for a nice solid piece of goat. What we got was (totally an educated guess here) braised goat formed into a patty and grilled - less than breath-taking, visually. It was served with a cauliflower and a purée of, I believe, cauliflower as well. All together, the bite was good. By itself, the goat lacked a little to be desired. Greg likened it to "moist beef jerky" and I could not disagree with him.

Duck
Green lentils on the bottom, seared duck breast, duck confit sprinkled throughout, crispy duck skin, radish, pickled radish, and curry/cumin makes a return visit. This dish was really nicely put together. The flavors all meshed well (aside from that pesky cumin flavor), but I found my piece of duck a tad on the chewy side. Otherwise, tasty.

Scallop
As a rule, I'm not a big scallop guy. It's got to have a really nice GBD sear on it. This one did. But that wasn't the highlight of the dish. The spicy braised pig cheek was aces. You will see pig cheeks here in the future. The only drag of this dish was the sweet potato purée, which was curried. See a theme here? The raisin relish on the plate was a revelation - who knew pickled (guessing) raisins would be so delicious?

Brisket
As you can imagine, I was stoked for this dish. I mean, how often do you see brisket on a small plates menu? If you answered, "never", then you'd be correct. I'm just gonna let you take in this picture for a minute.













I know, right? Brisket, over a barbecued baked bean purée (great idea btw), coffee barbecue sauce, smoked potatoes, dehydrated onion rings, sliced cornichons, and frisée tossed in slaw dressing. With such small servings and so many people, the idea is to get a piece of everything on the plate in your mouth, all at once, to create that "perfect bite". Do that on this dish? And it's summertime backyard barbecue in your face. Wow. Really killed it. Was the brisket as good as mine? Shut your face - no way, but the composed plate together was insane. Upscale BBQ achieved.

Beet Cake
Beet cake, tapioca, goats milk ice cream. The cake itself tasted kind of like a spice cake, until beet came and ran all the other flavors out of town, proclaiming its dominance. That was a beet cake, fa sho. The goats milk ice cream was yummy. The tapioca and the rest of the garnish around the plate was interesting, but not really wowing. I appreciate the technique.

Pumpkin Cheesecake
I should just leave you with the photo below, because a simple qwerty keyboard with nothing but letters can't possibly do it justice. I'll try though.













Pumpkin cheesecake, wattle seed cream, pistachio, and rum caramel. It's what every pumpkin cheesecake in the history of man wishes it could be, but knows it never will be. And yea, that's a tempered dark chocolate garnish that says, "chocolate".

All in all, I'm so glad to have finally eaten here. I will DEFINITELY go back when the menu changes and I highly recommend going with four or more people and pre-gaming a bit so you can tour the menu and get your money's worth.

I'm cooking a five course tasting menu for some friends this weekend and my buddy Mike Beech is doing beer and wine pairings for each course. This is going to be a blast and I can't wait to share it with y'all. Stay tuned!