Who & What: Tastings of Food from the Swan & Dolphin Restaurants, including…
- Todd English’s bluezoo
- Shula’s Steak House
- Il Mulino New York Tratorria
- Kimono’s Sushi Bar
- Cabana Bar & Beach Club
- The Fountain
- Delectable Desserts from Chef Laurent Braniard
When: Friday, October 8th 5:30-9:30 p.m.
Where: Causeway between the Dolphin and the Swan hotels
The Booths
Looking down the causeway towards the Swan
- Chimay Trappiste Beer was directly across the causeway – we stopped here numerous times (small pours and many beers to taste)
Preparing the tasting from Cabana Bar and Beach Club
Valley of the Moon Vineyard (from today’s earlier culinary demonstration) had an unoaked Chardonnay, quite tasty
Did not try the Malbec
The Fountain was serving falfel balls – light, garlicy balls of great hummus with a crispy coating – these were SO MUCH BETTER than the falfel at Tangerine Cafe
Il Mulino was serving small meatball subs – okay, but not anything we’d run back to have again
Kimono’s was serving Dragon sushi rolls (and they had quite a line for the first 2 hours)
Ty-Ku had two sake drinks: lemon drop and a guava raspberry sangria (that’s Heidi from the All Things Sake! seminar in the foreground)
Cocktails featuring a cucumber vodka
This is only half the line for filets from Shula’s – Nick doesn’t have a wide angle lens (the line decreased dramatically around 7:30)
The Tastings
Cabana Bar & Beach Club was serving Tuna Nachos…
… marinated sushi grade tuna, tortilla chip, sauce underneath … quite possibly our favorite of the evening … Nick says that if that was a larger, fresher tortilla chip with lime salt = HEAVEN
Todd English’s bluezoo was serving shrimp cocktail shooters …
… the top end has a lemon cream foam, you just sucked out the shrimp cocktail from that end, the cucumber at the other end acted as a stopper/plunger
Kimono’s was serving Dragon sushi rolls & the sushi chefs were sure to have aching backs…
… lovely gari and wasabi …
… portion was decent, 2 slices of dragon roll & not skimpy on the gari … this was good for the venue (but not as good as made to order fresh sushi)
The ladies at the dessert booth were consistently friendly and smiling…
… gorgeous sugar sculpture decorated the desserts booth …
… 3 samplings … strawberry lemon soup with angelfood cakelette (very good), ice cream sandwich (just eh), and caramel butterscotch something (good) …
… 3 more samples … chocolate brownie (? eh), lemon guava creamy thing (very good), fresh raspberry macaron (excellent) …
… close-up … the raspberries in this were very fresh and extremely flavorful, the macarons were crispy on the outside and moist/chewy on the inside (I haven’t been bit by the homemade macaron bug but I can see the temptation!)
The Music
The area under the Dolphin fountain was set up as a stage for three jazz groups — yes, that’s Deb Wills from allearsnet.com; Nora was very excited to meet Deb
First jazz act of the evening…
… last jazz act of the evening (we were sorry we’d arranged to leave at 8:30, these guys were GOOD)
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