Foodie Ramblings

[kelliem]

a_mews, this one's for you. ;)

Friday I went out with some friends to one of the best restaurants in Boulder, a place I've been wanting to visit since it opened about a year ago. Frasca Food & Wine. You have to make reservations well in advance at Frasca, as their chef, Laughlin Mackinnon-Patterson, was voted one of the Ten Best New Chefs in America by Food and Wine Magazine in July 2005. Their master sommelier, Bobby Stuckey, is a recipient of the James Beard Award for Outstanding Wine Service. The restaurant itself is intimate and classy without being intimidating. Patron dress ranged from jeans and tees to silk and suits. For the winter they have hung heavy thermal curtains in the entryway to keep the cold breezes from pestering the diners. They specialize in foods from the Friuli region of Italy, and their wine list is extensive and interesting, but I couldn't abscond with a copy of that so I don't know exactly what we drank. I know I had an Italian red from the Rizzardi vineyards, and Pat and Donna each had some sort of Merlot but I can't tell you which one.

Something we learned to keep in mind for the future: when making a reservation, be sure your entire party can all make it to the restaurant at the same time, as one of the quirks of their small kitchen is that they won't take any orders, even for appetizers, until all of your party is present. That made things a tad uncomfortable for a little while when one of our party ended up being nearly half an hour late, and the staff was beginning to fret about the second seating. Fortunately once she arrived things went smoothly. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the food was not as expensive as I had expected. It's on the high side of mid-range for Boulder. (Appetizer + 1st course + 2nd course + dessert + a glass of wine ran me about $57 before tax and tip. I've easily spent that much or more on special dinners at Sushi Zanmai, The Med, and Treppedas.) It's definitely a splurge, but not a bank-breaking one, and I'd been saving up for it.

Dinner was lovely. Our waiter happened to be their master sommelier, which I didn't realize until I was checking their website afterward so I could write up this "review." We started off with some of their appetizers: little baked cheese wafers called frico (we could have eaten dozens of these but contented ourselves with just a few), a bright, tangy slaw made with red cabbage, and the baccala fritta -- which are sort of a croquette made from potatoes and salt cod. We didn't much care for the baccala fritta, but it was an interesting experience, and the other two appetizers were delicious.

For the first course three of my friends had the butter poached lobster minestrone with rattlesnake shell beans and green lentils, and all three of them raved about it. I had the house-made country duck pate with onion relish and grilled brioche. The pate was marvelous, silky and rich with a great, smoky undertone. I asked about that, and our waiter said I was probably tasting the bacon they add to the pate to make it more robust. I don't think my other friend had a first course-- if she did, I somehow managed to miss it while I was communing with my pate and wondering if it would be rude to reenact a certain scene from When Harry Met Sally in honor of the food.

For a main course I had Vitello Livio Felluga - described in the menu as: sliced Quebec veal loin salad with roasted hen-of-the-woods mushrooms and toasted hazelnuts. It was incredibly luscious! After a few bites I realized I was tasting things not mentioned in the menu so I asked if it also had figs and lemon in it, and lo and behold, it did! Little slivers of Mission figs added hints of chewy/crunchy sweetness, and they had drizzled the dish with a lemon-infused olive oil.

Three of my friends all shared bites of their dinners with me (and vice versa). One had the evening special of Hand-shaped Hen Egg Agnolotti with Spicy Pork Carbonara (agnolotti are a little bit like ravioli). Also shared were the Russet Potato Gnocci with creamed spinach, brown butter and fresh ground nutmeg; and the Riso Superfino Carnaroli-- a risotto with wild Matsutake mushrooms and mushroom vinaigrette. All of the shared dishes were marvelous, and I'd like to go back and have more than just a taste of each, but I will have to save up again. One other friend had the Pan Roasted Sea Bass with pickled beets, watermelon radishes, grilled radicchio di Treviso and vermouth butter, which she said was delicious, but she didn't offer to share. :-) During the meal the circulating bread-boys kept placing thin slices of incredibly good house-baked bread on our bread plates until we cried 'enough.'

Of course, we had to have dessert. Between us we tried their selection of 6 house-made chocolates (they use Valhrona!), the 'fruit on the bottom' an apple crumble topped with house-made Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream, the house-made blood-orange sorbet, and the chocolate cake with toasted hazelnuts and praline ganache. All the desserts were fantastic. The cake was feather-light and absolutely perfect, topped with bits of Valhrona chocolate and hazelnuts. The blood orange sorbet is worth going again for, all by itself.

The ingredients are all top of the line, many of them organic, and they buy from local farmers whenever possible. As far as I could tell the only artificial thing in the entire restaurant was the gaunt 'attractive' woman sitting at the table next to us who had a fake tan, fake nails, fake hair color and, judging by their gravity-defying roundness and perkiness unusual in a woman of our age, I suspect fake breasts.