Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Review of Lark Resturant


My beloved and I had a date night on Friday night. We got dressed up and headed to Lark. A resturant in Seattle, near Seattle U.

Building, Space, etc.

The building, tables, and general ambiance was good. It was VERY conducive to conversation being that there was almost no (if any music) the space had charming wood. It was intimate without feeling crowded.

Food style:

The food style is New American and they have many small plates under different topics. Topics like: cheese, vegetables/grains, charcuterie, fish, meat. So what is charcuterie. I don't know (I'm going to google it as soon as I finish this). And the reality is that the menu is chock full of foods that you should google before you eat. I have a masters degree, I am well read, and I love foods, words and am no fool. But parts of the menu were off putting because language created a distance.

Food- let's get to the nitty gritty:

Cheese: we didn't order cheese. We are a little over cheesed these days.

Charcuterie: First we had Landjäger with two mustards. Don't know what Landjager is. Neither did I. However, I now know that it is basically a dried sausage I don't know what animal it originated from (it tasted a lot like deer sausage) it was served with two mustards. Both were very good. In all honesty I was impressed. The meat was sausagey (salty, fairly plain) but not boring as hell.


Vegetables/Grains and fish together

We had a lemon sauted escarole. It was served with the eel (we'll get to that in a minute) it was terrible. I hated it. It didn't taste sauteed it tasted boiled. I didn't want boiled escarole. We paid enough for it but I didn't touch the stuff. We did have the Roasted eel with saba and new potato salad. It was beautifully sweet and tender and the potato salad relaxed the sweetness. I am not convinced the potato salad was the perfect match for the eel. But this was the best dish of the night! It was very well done.

Our final main course was Pork belly with chanterelles,cabbage and Heirloom bean ragoût they served this with our grain order of Bluebird Grain Farms farro. The pork belly was good. It was a nice cut of pork belly. The cabbage was presented and folded beautifully underneath the pork belly and the ragout was an afterthought. The dish was fine. I was hoping for better but I have no serious complaints. the cabbage disappointed me. The farro dish was very good. When it arrived at the table it smelled like popcorn.I realized that the smell was so much like popcorn because it was smothered with butter. The mushrooms atop the farro were downright yum. So even thought it wasn't the most interesting dish I liked it a lot.

My beloved had the apple, ginger, walnut crisp for desert. It was a pretty ordinary crisp. I had the tartine. I seem unable to remember what it was like. Maybe it was all the wine.


Review of Staff:

Our waitress was pretty good but had not tried everything on the menu. So she couldn't offer comparisons very well. That was hard. The host of the night was akward. We tried to ask him about wine. He checked out. He didn't really seems that interest in helping us-and there was no eye contact.

Okay. That is my review of Lark