Our final night of the road trip was last night and we head home later this morning after what I'm sure will be another amazing breakfast like we had here yesterday at the Fearrington House Inn restaurant.
Alas, last night's dinner was a bit of a letdown, despite the elegant setting, excellent service and most exciting menu. There is an option of 3 courses for $95 or 4 for $115. We all decided that they were so many delicious choices to choose the 3 course menu to start and then decide on dessert after we had finished. We never got that far as the dishes were indeed quite huge, and even odder, confusing with so many ingredients on each plate it was hard to keep track of them.
Canapés arrived first with a vegetarian pickled watermelon and tomato salad with basil herb aioli for Sam and a salmon mousse with caper-raisin puree for us. We all got the miniature canoli I filled with lemon ricotta cheese and herb powder. They were quite deliciou,s but it seemed to take forever to have the wine that we ordered delivered. A 2017 Alain Graillot Crozes-Hermitages Blanc from the Rhone was mineral forward and ideal.
Next came the amuse bouche of cauliflower custard with sweet summer corn salad and a crispy Lotus root topped with Brown butter powder. It was tasty indeed but the custard had the oddest rubbery taste. Everyone was happy when the herbed parmesan corn bread and ep- baguette arrived. The bread was warm and fabulous and the salted butter and sweet butter were both really superb. Seconds were in order for most of us.
For the 1st course Sam chose the heirloom tomato gazpacho with pickled watermelon, pearl onion, basil, chives and a tomato espuma. Will and I loved the she-crab salad with a yellow pepper and crab custard and Sherry foam, although the canoli stuffed with creme fraiche seemed a bit bland unless you mixed it with the other ingredients; there was also nutmeg, snow peas, mustard seed and tomato gel. The crab itself came out as a huge torchon-like pate and was indeed excellent, especially since we are so picky about our crab being from Washington DC. Madeleine chose the local goat cheese tart with caramelized onions, beets, champagne and spice of the angels which we later found out was fennel pollen, which was why I avoided selecting this.
Both Will and Sam chose the white asparagus with Fearrington farm egg, avocado, hazelnut and brick dough for their 2nd course, and while the asparagus were delicious the egg itself just seemed a bit lame. We had told our server Brian at the beginning of the meal that we could not eat grapefruit and yet Will's dish arrived with several segments on top and it took almost 10 minutes for them to replace the entire dish rather than just taking the grapefruit off, which would have been so much easier; perhaps he thought it was an allergy, as opposed to something we just couldn't eat. Madeleine chose the Herb crusted lamb with red current green tomato, green olive and mint and seemed very happy with that. My octopus with compressed melon and seared cucumber came with paprika oil and puree, pistachio cream, more mustard and mustard seed as well as a yogurt that had the texture of a boiled egg white, not something very appetizing. The octopus, melon and cucumber were excellent and I loved the paprika, but the yogurt really wrecked the dish.
Sam declared that his main course, Carolina gold rice with Fearrington vegetables, black garlic, cherry tomatoes and English peas, was the best dish he had during the entire vacation. It's very funny because when he saw the menu he looked at it and said "the only vegetarian main course is rice, how boring!" Will and I decided to split 2 main courses and the duck breast with pickled Bing cherries and crispy salsify and salsify puree with honey glaze, savoy cabbage and hibiscus was probably the better of the two. The duck was cooked sous-vide and then seared which of course means that the skin is not crispy; something I really missed. The other dish was a veal and truffle manicotti stuffed with veal custard(fondant), Maitake mushrooms, pearl onion, red pepper and zucchini. A blueberry crumble was on the side which made for an odd addition. Madeleine had the same dish and none of us could finish it as it was very rich and the pasta had the oddest texture.
We chose a 2009 Guillemard-Pothier Beaune "Les Greves" Premier Cru Which had the most amazing nose and an intense fruit for Pinot Noir, but the overall effect was truly boring.
We never really complained about anything because the food wasn't bad ,it was just odd.
We decided to skip the desserts and by this time my nose was running so badly I thought I was sick because the room was so cold. They finally turned the air conditioning from 66ﾟ to 70ﾟ as we were getting ready to leave and brought over some nice mignardises of Salted caramel, pineapple pate a fruit, chocolate shortbread, white chocolate guava truffles and Blackberry marshmallows. They were yummy but the white chocolate guava truffles were definitely the winners.... of a meal that probably isn't worthy of winning much.
A truly nice gesture was a jar of farm made organic marmalade to take home.
