03.06.08
Posted in rated 7 to 7.5, Stowe, VT at 17:35 by Dominique
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.
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02.28.08
Posted in rated 6 to 6.5, Stowe, VT at 19:57 by Dominique
18 Main St., Green Mountain Inn, Stowe, VT, 800-253-7302
Great for: New England experience, après-ski
The Boyfriend has recently gotten me into snowboarding in a big way. We took advantage of the Martin Luther King, Jr. long weekend to go up to Stowe with a friend. We squeezed in a couple hours on the slopes Saturday afternoon and then looked for food. The Green Mountain Inn looked empty from the outside, but was actually quite busy downstairs in the restaurant. I guess it’s just too cold to stay close to windows when outside is 15° F.
We enjoyed a drink in the lounge while waiting about 20 minutes for our table. It seems like a really popular place with people of all ages. They have an extensive and interesting collection of whips, crops and horse-related things. It kind of looks like a really nice, large pub inside, with an adjoining dining room.
The boys liked but I wasn’t so much a fan of the honey oatmeal bread that we got first. It was very sweet. We shared the crab cakes in citrus fennel, basil aioli and lemon vinaigrette to start. They were quite good; a tiny bit lemony but that cleaned our palates. I liked the proportion of breading to crab and peppers.
The Boyfriend did not like his pan-seared scallops. They came in lobster-cognac sauce with warm smoked bacon, baby spinach salad, wild rice pilaf and beans, carrots and spinach. All of the accompaniment was pretty good, actually; the most important part, though, was not. It was a real pity because The Whip is very generous with their scallops. I find in New York restaurants tend to give maybe five or six scallops in an entrée and expect us to be satisfied, which I suppose is reasonable if your stomach is used to starvation rations (mine is certainly not). There were lots and lots of large scallops, except all of them were a bit fishy-tasting and just wildly oversalted. There were so many scallops, we kept trying bits of them to see if they’d magically improved. Alas, no.
My steak au poivre was much better. It came with mushroom gravy sauce, which I asked them to change to something else. Our waiter went above and beyond to make me happy. He suggested turkey gravy instead, which I enthusiastically accepted, and even brought a little bit out for me to taste to make sure I wanted it. It was very tasty, and made the mashed potatoes, carrots and beans yummy as well. Although it was a bit fatty without much poivre, I liked my meat pretty well.
Our friend’s pan-seared tenderloin medallions with cherries and thyme, sage, port wine and cherry reduction, caramelized onions, prosciutto, mashed potatoes and fresh beans and carrots were quite good as well. The cherries were too sweet for me but I liked the rest, and I could tell it was a good dish for people who enjoy sweets with their savory things.
I liked the laid-back, slightly rustic atmosphere of the place. The service was very attentive, and it was a pretty good experience overall except for the scallops. We realized how spoiled we are in NYC, though, with good, even exceptional, food in almost every restaurant and on nearly every corner.
Rating: 6 / 10
Our cost: $130 for 3 people with 3 drinks total
Noise level: each table had privacy if they wanted to be quiet
Chance of walking in: medium on a weekend
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