Thanks for saving my ass [as always], Arthur!
*My name for any time that I'm looking at blogs at work.
I spent the last weekend in June up in the Berkshires, ferried up the Taconic Parkway alongside my dear friend Lendon (whose birthday it was) in a baby blue Chrysler Sebring convertible. Alas, rental fleets. To be fair, the Sebring did provide a modicum of enjoyable open-air motoring, in its own soft and wobbly way. The more important issue at hand, though, was where to treat Lendon for his birthday dinner. Our original plan had been to take a day trip upstate and have an early meal at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, but as the trip itself expanded, I neglected to adjust the dinner plan accordingly. So I found myself flipping through a local food periodical in a motel room and landed on a double-page ad for The Old Inn on the Green in New Marlborough, MA.
I learned with a quick Google search that current co-owner and executive chef Peter Platt purchased the Old Inn from its prior owners in 2005, three years after he left the Wheatleigh Hotel in Lenox for the inn’s kitchen. His French technique-based menus landed the inn among Food & Wine’s top 50 hotel restaurants in a recent year and earned a favorable comment from Wine Spectator, which seemed like the sparkliest accolades to be found among the endless and mostly uncompelling ads, so I thought I’d see if they could squeeze us in. Two at 8:30? Apparently no problem. Allow me to deflate all suspense and tell you now that we lucked out to a ludicrous degree and had a mind-blowing evening. I love getting away from the city.
Take your Philippe Starck ghost chairs and stuff ‘em.
The Old Inn dates back to 1760, when it was a stagecoach relay, and it’s been restored in a way that preserves a nice patina over the whole place. The dining rooms are lit solely by candlelight, a touch of authenticity that I actually relished given how sadly accustomed I’ve become to the décor so many New York City restaurants get away with. Everything about the inn, and especially the food (aside from the locality of most of the ingredients), was decidedly and welcomely un-trendy.
Once we’d ordered the tasting menu, we decided against the wine pairings in favor of sharing a bottle, and the task of choosing one wine to accompany seven distinct courses produced a crippling feeling of inadequacy. Luckily, James the sommelier only let me mumble on helplessly about white Burgundies for about 20 seconds before sparing me further humiliation with a cheaper Silvaner (2007 “Weingut am Stein,” Ludwig Knoll) that worked out perfectly.
We were thoroughly amused.
And then came the euphoric onslaught. The kitchen started by sending out two courses that weren’t on the menu: a chilled cucumber soup amuse, followed by truffle-oiled asparagus tips with pickled parsnip and radish. The cucumber soup lifted me out of a cocktail-induced inattentiveness, and even looking back over the whole meal, it was a standout – tart and grassy from a bright streak of citrus and a heavy dose of cilantro.
The first course from the menu was a roasted red beet tarte tatin with herbed chevre. This candy-sweet ‘appetizer’ could pass muster on many a fine dessert menu. I don’t know if Platt employs a pastry chef, but if not, then consider my respect for him tripled based on the care and creativity in this dish, not to mention the actual dessert(s).
Fuck a terrine. I’ll take my liver caveman style.
For the next course, Lendon had a seared diver scallop and butter-poached lobster atop caramelized fennel and lobster sauce. He ate all the lobster before I could try any, but the bite of scallop and fennel I had was awfully good. I had seared foie gras with black beluga lentil salad, chanterelles and a madeira sauce. Salad, my ass. Those lentils were heavily studded with bits of bacon (hallelujah), but even with the fois and the rich mushrooms and rich sauce, the dish as a whole wasn’t overwhelming the way its parts and generous portioning might suggest. Matter of fact, everything the kitchen sent out was consistently clean and enjoyably finish-able.
Best course of the evening; the peas prevailed.
After four courses the Silvaner was opening up nicely and I was tasting more fruit, but it was still crisp and refreshing. It paired especially well with our next course. For Lendon, crunchy-skinned arctic char with fresh peas and tarragon sauce. In his words, “the peas win.” I didn’t argue. I was too busy going apeshit over my squab – a perfectly rare breast and leg, with a savoy cabbage parcel (I have no idea what the parcel was filled with, but needless to say, it was tasty), roasted cauliflower and porcini sauce. When I first read the menu, I wondered if the proliferation of different sauces was a symptom of Platt’s French technique gone overboard. But the palate doesn’t lie, and I couldn’t find fault with any one of them – especially this one.
Both of us could have gone home full and quite happy after those five courses, and if I were to last for three more, I needed a cigarette. Out on the porch, I was taken with how dark and quiet it was, as far as I could see in every direction, and I suspected that in any other place, this food wouldn’t make nearly as big an impression. Or rather, I realized how perfectly matched the food is to the inn and its environs. The difference between this dinner and almost every other dinner I’ve had became suddenly immeasurable.
There’s even more. I shit you not.
We sat back down to an asparagus risotto with a toasty parmesan tuile. Two thumbs up to Chef Platt for cooking the rice al dente to the point of slight crunchiness. For our main courses, Lendon had a roulade of sole with saffron sauce, and I had a horseradish-crusted rack of lamb with crispy polenta and tiny vegetables in a rosemary lamb jus, both superb. The plump chop standing jauntily on my plate had a nice warm center but wasn’t at all chewy, and the accompaniments made an unimpeachable case for keeping things simple.
Perseverance yields sweet rewards. Oh, yes.
The cheese course that followed also could have ended the meal perfectly: Bayley Hazen (incidentally one of my all-time favorites – a raw cow’s milk blue from Vermont that you should seek out immediately if you’re not already a huge fan) with poached fruit and a petite salad. And, incredibly, before the dessert course from the menu, they sent out a first dessert of homemade hazelnut and chocolate gelatos in a frozen strawberry with peach-apricot compote.
The last course was perhaps the most beautiful – a frozen lemon mousse dome topped with rhubarb-white wine gelee on a platform of strawberry gelato and a graham-like crust. This was, if you haven’t been keeping track, our tenth course, but we polished it off like champs. Anything less, I feel, would have been an offense to this brilliant operation.
Petit-fours, empty bottle, full stomachs and a very light wallet.
We dropped the Sebring’s clunky ragtop and cranked the heat up for the drive back to our motel, and the bracing, fragrant country air was the perfect thing to cap off three and a half hours of sustained eating. It really was a singular performance by the kitchen. I suspect, however, that limiting oneself to two or three courses from the inn’s a la carte menu wouldn’t make dinner there any less impressive, due to the skill and distinctiveness in both the food and – just as importantly – the environment. Most of my recent food outings in the city have been of the bang-for-your-buck variety, which typically requires convincing oneself that an utter lack of ambiance is its own kind of ‘ambiance’, so happening upon such a meal in an equally inviting place made the splurge worth every penny. Even if you just want a break from the inexhaustible list of must-try places in New York (yes please!), then look no further.
The Old Inn on the Green, Route 57, New Marlborough, MA
www.oldinn.com
Many thanks to Lendon Flanagan for the photos.
No comments:
Post a Comment