Winterlicious 2007: Thuet

Last night we did our last Winterlicious restaurant, with Jay’s sister Tammie and her new beau Nick. We went French to Thuet’s on King.

Our reservation was at 7pm, we showed up 15min earlier. The restaurant was nicely empty, I suppose their first seating was way over and now they were revving up for the second. We didn’t start of so hot, once we checked in our coats, the host asked us if we were here for the Winterlicious menu, we informed him that yes we were, at that point he politely informed us that he hopes we enjoy it but (since we are here for the budget meal… well ok he didn’t use those exact words but that’s the impression I got…anywho…) we only had an 11/2 for our meal… yeah I know what the?, but we were there so we said good to know and were shown to our table…

Our waiter showed up promptly, with menus… we actually had the option to go with the regular menu or Winterlicious, we decided to go with the budget meal and took our drink orders. Tammie and I went with a Manhattan on the rocks Jay with the Godfather and Nick had a nice glass of white wine.

The bread basket was very nice.. as Thuet’s has it’s very own bakery.. the bread was fresh dense and yummy, served with house made dip… a good start..

Now for Thuet Winterlicious menu:

Appetizer:

Sweet potato with Jerusalem artichoke chips, saffron crème fraîche
or
Red beet marinated organic salmon, yuzu infused Napa cabbage, sashimi essence

Main:

Beef Bourguignon à l’Alsacienne
or
Choucroute de poisson

Dessert:

Île flottante
or
Profiteroles with warm Soma chocolate sauce

To start Jay had the salmon and the rest of us the soup. The salmon was wonderful, the soup very sweet and nice as well however the Jerusalem artichoke chips didn’t hold up so well, they were already sunk in my soup when I got it… soggy little chips weren’t crunchy at all but … well I didn’t really expect them to be…

For the main I went with the fish and the rest of the group had the beef. The French beef stew was served in a bowl with spätzle.. it was very good… the beef amazingly tender. The fish I didn’t understand … it’s French food… but my skate wing was served on a bed of sauerkraut with two tiny paressiane potatoes, a quenelle of fish mousse and two slices of carrots cut out in the shape of daisies all sided with some kind of foam. Now the sauerkraut threw me a bit… but I like the stuff… but what’s with the cut outs of veggies… that is so old school.. seriously poor whoever you are in the kitchen with the daisy cookie cutter making sure your carrot daisies are even… just a tad tacky…

The dessert was disappointing... Jay and Nick had the island, Tammie and I had the profiterole… the floating islands were floating pucks… well actually it was a floating island… they weren’t tough, they were fluffy and soft but shaped like pucks.. small disks.. like someone was cutting a floating island log back in the kitchen.. the profiterole was served on a bed of chocolate sauce with a scoop of ice cream in the center of the profiterole… I enjoyed the sauce Tammie didn’t… I would have preferred some sort of custard in my profiterole the ice cream didn’t go with it… and it wasn’t very tasty either… over all I had better…

One more thing.. our waiter was pretty much absent thru most of our meal.. I felt very ignored.. we had to place our wine order for the main course with the busboy.. who went found our waiter.. who had to come to our table and confirm it… not classy… maybe if we were there for the regular menu we’d be paid more attention.. I don’t think we’ll be going though… there are plenty of other restaurants in the city… I might reconsider come Summerlicious..

So… Mistura/Sopra are our hands down winners… no one came close..