Olmsted

Two Fridays ago, wifey & I had an early dinner at Olmsted. I expected to dislike Olmsted. Restaurants with this amount of buzz, that required 22-days advance notice to get a reservation usually feel like a letdown (Cosme - I'm looking at you.) And yet there at the end, we were finished and completely blown away by the quality and conceit of each and every dish. Olmsted – in our one experience – is a winner.

We sat in front of the tiny kitchen quickly befriending the cooks (Jenny and Kyle) as we watched them work on dish after dish. There’s no need for me to go into long detail (mostly because this blog is primarily for myself) as each dish was excellent and it looks like the menu turns over frequently enough that the same dish won’t be found a month or two later. Out of all the dishes we ate, we both thought the ballotine component of the duck entrée to be most delicious. I have memories of ballotines from the 90s being really lackluster chicken thigh meat filled with a unappealing goo (nee Pate). The whole thing just a vacuous attempt at fancy food. This was something wholly different; more like a perfectly executed duck forcemeat, sliced like pancetta.

We enjoyed a bottle of Slovenian white with our meal and left having spent just shy of $200. For what’s prepared, I would not call that expensive, but it’s definitely not a monthly indulgence.