03.06.08
Review of Blue Moon Café, Stowe, Sunday January 2008
35 School St., Stowe, VT, 802-253-7006
Great for: crab cake, chocolate soufflé, New England experience, après-ski
After a tough day of snowboarding, the Boyfriend, our friend R and I were very much looking forward to dinner. I’d heard great things about this place; R remembered it fondly from his prior trip to Stowe, and there was a lot of positive feedback online. I also found out that they change the menu every Friday, which sounds interesting. We were there for the January 18-24 menu.
My crab cake appetizer with herb aïoli and grilled sweet onion was great. I’d had crab cake at the Whip the night before, but I was kind of on a crab thing, and I’m really glad I tried it here because it was even better. I demolished it pretty quickly before turning greedy eyes on the boys’ plates. The Boyfriend’s chicken enchiladas with pickled red onion and sour cream and R’s roasted asparagus with pecorino and red peppers were also very tasty. We were quite impressed with our starters.
Unfortunately, the mains were not quite as good. My lamb steak with paprika and cucumber raita was flavorful, but slightly dry and burned. The steel head trout in balsamic butter sauce with beluga lentils and spinach was a bit sweet, while the spinach was better than the tasteless lentils. The orange-glazed flounder with blood oranges and kalamata salad was also too sweet and somewhat blah. They were decent, but none of the dishes were as wonderful as the swooning reviews I’d read led us to believe.
I am happy to say that the baked chocolate soufflé was very good, so at least we had a good beginning and end to our meal. It was the best thing on the menu. The service was great too, just the right level of attentiveness for the casualness of the setting. To be fair, I think my palate has been spoiled by New York restaurants, so for the area this is a pretty good restaurant and certainly the best of the two that we tried in Stowe. And most of the reviews I could find online were full of adulation, so it’s possible that we caught them on an off-night.
Rating: 7 / 10
Our cost: $200 (2 drinks each)
Noise level: pretty quiet
Chance of walking in: medium.
