Eating at the Driskill Grill

Corrie and I this past Tuesday got dressed up and went to eat at the Driskill Grill, which I believe I mentioned in a the second-to-last most recent post. We were looking for fine dining, and maybe that should be FINE dining or fine dining, or, in normal speak, the fancy expensive stuff where almost as much time is spent trying to make the plate look impressive as is spent in how awesome the food tastes. The snobby shit that's better left in places like New York, Paris, Tokyo, even Vegas nowadays...

That's how we roll. When we look for "fine", we know what to look for. We're very critical. The Internet had certain things to say about the Driskill, and the photos said plenty more, but we still--we just got here from New York, man--had low expectations.

Besides an older gentleman down the way loudly asking for "foy-grus", and then, upon being asked if he'd like the pate or the seared style, answered, "Then I'll have the filet mignon", I can say that the Driskill Grill exceeded our expectations fully, dazzled us beyond what we would have guessed, and, if given the financial opportunity, will be returning to in the future. Since we are incredibly picky and critical, I will share what we ate because some things needed work, but, paying the price we paid we felt it was worth it, and the quality was New York City worthy. This is high praise from people like me and Corrie.

Their menu is set up so you can either get an entree or choose smaller portions of entrees to make your own "tasting" menu. Tasting menus are nice in that you get to, obviously, taste different things, usually things that are needed to get rid of, or euphemistically "chosen by the Chef". Getting to make your own tasting menu really intrigued us, and since the portion was around half, and the price slightly lower, and we were curious how they did things here, we decided to go with that.

We each had a plate of appetizer; we split a salad; we had three small entrees; we had sorbet; the wine we chose was out, and got a slightly more expensive Pinot Noir for the same price as our original choice. That's the structure. I'll get started with the explanation.

At fancy restaurants a guest will receive an amus bouche, not an appetizer or bread, but something to cleanse the palate and settle the stomach while also possibly letting your senses know good food is coming soon. Our amus was a ginger sorbet on a really cold Asian style spoon, and, we noticed, everyone around us got watermelon instead of ginger. We thought that was because I made a note on the internet reservation site about our NY background, and they knew we'd be in for it all. Plenty of people wouldn't like this sorbet. We thought it was great. It was spicy in a sweet way, and the ginger really stuck with your mouth, tingling for a while. Even as the tingling faded, as the bread arrived, I noticed my stomach feeling chipper and excited. Unexpected? You bet. Surprisingly high quality? Yup. Passed the first test without even knowing it.

The bread that was brought to the table was replenished anytime it might appear we'd want bread, and I mean all throughout dinner. There were two breads: a locally bought French baguette, and a made-in-house wheat loaf with walnuts, golden raisons, and apricots. Oh man, that dark loaf with the walnuts and raisons was great. After the first time, I told the guy to just re-stock that good stuff.

Since by their menu they charged this much for each person when it came to appetizers, we each got a plate of dates for an appetizer. These were the originally Arabic (but now usually grown in California) medjool dates--big beautiful juicy suckers, wrapped in bacon and stuffed with mascarpone cheese and Portuguese chorizo. They came three to a plate, plated on three lines of coulee, with some extra virgin olive oil present. These were really great, well executed, well put together, well seasoned, and too many. In New York, the chef would have the balls to only offer two as an appetizer, since that's the right amount. Three is too many, but here in Texas, giving a guest only two may be seen as a short, so three is the number they give. My plate had some wayward olive oil, too. It wasn't that nice. Not too bad a complaint, if there had to be one.

The salad we split came next. It was a green-leaf lettuce affair, dressed with a vinaigrette comprised of the oils of avocado and pumpkin seed, set into what appeared a planter made of pastry wafer, all smartly placed on a rectangular plate with green and orange oil swirls. It looked like a planter--a pastry jar, maybe--with a plant coming out the top, which was the green-leaf lettuce salad. The greens were properly dressed--not too much, not too little--and the dressing was original and different. It was garnished with fried plantain chips, which were a little salty (and if I say something is a little salty it's meaningful, not like some jack-mo off the street who lives off Mrs. Dash), but not inedible. The pastry dough planter might have been the best part; it was freaking great.

Our first "tasting" entree was the kaijiki, a fish from the Pacific, usually caught by people calling Hawai'i home. It was seared like you'd find with tuna: seared on the outside and totally raw in the middle. Unlike tuna, kaijiki is a white fish, and the inside was the pale yellow you'd expect with cod or tilapia. It was fantastic, if not even having been better the day before. It came on a bed of yellow lentils and blanched green kale. Thinking about it now, I would have chosen black "Tuscan" kale, but that's my thing. The lentils were crazy--al dente something fierce, almost like being underdone, but they weren't. They were great, and like the kale, were seasoned well (someone who knows fine dining knows this phrase means "enough kosher salt").

Next we had a lamb chop. It was encrusted with pistachios and a very light (almost unnoticeable) wasabi root sauce. It came on a bed of ratatouille and blue-cheese and barley "risotto". The blue-cheese and barley "risotto" was written on the menu like that, with the quote marks, and I know from (NYC) experience that that means "barley sexy-ed up with butter and the blue-cheese". The barley "risotto" was great; the cut of lamb was really nice, cooked medium for Corrie, very tender and juicy, well seasoned...the flavors came together. The ratatouille on the other hand, needed some love and more seasoning. All that made it onto our plate seemed like star-squash in tomato sauce, and it needed salt. Ratatouille is not a bad dish, or garnish, and is now very well known from the Pixar film. It consists of squash, tomatoes, and eggplant cooked in a tomato based (sometimes with vinegar or capers) type of sauce. Corrie doesn't like eggplant, so I didn't mind that not being present...more salt would have been nice. The madeira sauce that was around the base of the barley was slightly over reduced. Madeira is a wine that comes from an island of the same name and is part of Portugal.

So far, we've had "wayward olive oil" and "not enough salt" (fried plantains are always too salty or not enough; there's very little middle ground) and "slightly over reduced madeira sauce". At this point we're very impressed.

The last tasting entree we had was the filet mignon. Since Corrie asked for the lamb chop medium, I got the filet med rare. It came centered on a rectangular plate on a swirl of purple potato puree (there are no "mashed" potatoes in fine dining, only "puree") that had been hit with truffle oil. To each side of the meat lay a bed of blanched brussels sprout leaves, on top of which they laid quartered king oyster mushrooms--nevermind that they called them trumpet mushrooms. I know the difference. These were not trumpets, they were king oysters, but they were great. The purple potato puree had just enough truffle oil to not make me want to gag (not a huge truffle fan, personally), the brussels leaves were tender without being mushy, seasoned well; and the meat was tender and delicious. That meat was really well executed.

I don't want anyone to think Corrie and I can be wowed substantially by exotic or perceived "fancy" foods. We're wowed by crisp plates, good choices in menu component combinations, and excellent execution.

My sorbet, blackberry, felt and tasted more like a gelato than a sorbet. That's not a complaint. Corrie had lemon, and it was tart and tangy and good.

One overall criticism that I had, from the very beginning, that I wanted to wait until now to mention, so any of my readers making it this far could read about the food, its plating an preparation, was that the china didn't match. The date plated would fit in at a chic Chelsea Asian restaurant, as would the salad's and filet's plate, while the sorbet liner and the lamb chop plate could be from a modernist place, with round plates and extreme-yet-subtle striping. And the bread plates were small white china with leafy relief type sculpturing along the outer layer. Plates that we never used, that were on the table and removed once any kind of food arrived, that were only there to make you feel like this is a restaurant and not your table in the corner of your home's kitchen, were large white china with a gold leaf design. They were pretty, yes, but didn't match any other piece of china we saw. It was something we strict critics have to mention, but didn't, of course, ruin any part of our experience.

All said and done, leaving full and drunk on grub and not the wine we slowly sipped, I'll give you an idea of the price in slang terms, slang that we'd use when we were younger: with tip and wine, it was under two bills, but not comfortably. Plenty of people would never consider what we paid an okay price for a dinner for two, but Corrie and I aren't those people. We're snobs who, while living in New York City, gained the culinary vocabulary to converse about what we expect and what we're getting. And the room on a credit card to make it happen.

Well worth it.