My birthday dinner was delayed because my boyfriend was ill. We finally got to go Cafe Atlantico last Saturday night. It is Jose Andres’ restaurant that houses ‘Minibar‘, but Minibar is a separate restaurant and features molecular gastronomy. It’s also $120 a seat and they serve a lot of food I can’t eat. So Minibar was a no go for me. (They will work with food allergies, but mine are limiting and extensive enough that I can’t eat most of their posted menu. However, the main restaurant was excellent at working with me.)
Cafe Atlantico features Latin cuisine, but there were a lot of interesting touches. Everything was foamy. Different. Our first drinks were cocktails. Boyfriend had a pineapple caipirinha and I had a magic mojito. It was a mojito with cotton candy. I got distracted from the sommelier’s speech while the server poured the cocktail over the cotton candy and it melted into a wonderfully balanced drink. So far it was so good. Delicious.
Boyfriend got the sweetbread appetizer with leeks, morels, bacon bits and bacon foam. I got seared foie gras with corn puree, corn and Mexican ‘truffles’. Boyfriend says I got the better dish. It was damned good. I liked the so-called truffles. They were savory. But the foie gras itself was creamy, delicate and wonderful. Boyfriend’s dish was great too, but he didn’t like it so much. Normally he doesn’t like mushrooms, but he really liked the morels. That’s saying something.
Our entrees were the Feijao Tropiero for boyfriend and Striped Bass Veracruz for me. I loved my dish. There were cherry tomatoes cut in half with capers, olives and pearl onions in a savory, sweet, salty combination which I really liked. There was a lime foam to complement the fish, which was moist and tender with a skin that was a little crispy on the edges, tail on, which I don’t mind at all. Leaving it on reminds you where fish comes from, and not just some weird inorganic rectangular shape. Boyfriend’s dish was a pork tenderloin with greens, oranges, black beans, rice, and a crazy, crazy, INSANELY HOT habanero sauce. Basically we think it was pureed habanero peppers. Oh, and more bacon foam. However, it was overkill on his dish and didn’t really add anything to it. But the pork medallions just fell apart. They were pink and tender. Adding a dab of habanero was fantastic.
The wine we selected was a great Malbec from Argentina. It was a 2005 Catena, a half-split (375ml), so just enough for the appetizer and entree courses. I was still drinking my first cocktail when the main course arrived. The sommelier, Jill Zimorski, was fantastic. She was super helpful in selecting a wine. We were looking at a 2007 Seghesio Zinfandel, also a split, but not convinced it would go well with a pork dish and a white fish dish. She said the Seghesio was actually a decent choice, but gave us two other options, including the Malbec and some third option which I didn’t hear because of the magic mojito distraction. I have to say, Jill is great. She’s one of the best sommeliers I’ve ever met. Extremely knowledgable and friendly. She could really speak to us without really specific wine snob language. We’re still developing our palates, so we need to be able to communicate what we like with ‘imprecise’ language. She was really great about that.
Cafe Atlantico gets a thumbs up from me and a neutral mark from boyfriend. It’s not someplace I could eat once a month, but a few times a year maybe. But I know we’d rather eat at Jaleo (his original tapas place).
(Oh yeah, don’t ask. It was for my birthday and the tab, with tip was just under $200. The only thing I paid for was a cab ride home ($10) from the bar we went to meet our friends later. Boyfriend paid the bar tab there too.)
Related posts:
- Not a Cheap Dinner at Home On Sunday night I made a pork tenderloin with a...
- Checking Out the Farmer’s Market Oh boy is the Farmer’s Market expensive in this neck...
- Thanksgiving Food Recap Menu: Turkey (16.5lb that I told Boyfriend would be too...
- Vineferous in Frederick, MD If you happen to dine at Bryan Voltaggio’s restaurant in...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
