Foodie and the Everyman

Since we couldn’t get out to Eigensinn Farm the first time around, we ended up going to dinner on site at Blue Mountain at the Oliver Bonacini Cafe Grill.  If you’re ever in the area, you should make a point to go and have a drink with Rob, the nicest bartender in the world.  We told him our sad story and he made it his personal mission to ensure that we had a wonderful evening anyway.  And then we had a snafu, but more on that later.

For the first part of our meal, we were sitting at the bar, because we had no reservations and it was a busy Friday evening.  So we sat there and had a few drinks first, and I discovered one of my favorite drinks of all time.  Rob makes this amazing drink called a Crazy Wisdom, which is fresh lime mix, tequila and green tea liqueur in equal parts.  Might sound strange, but by the end of the evening, I’d had 5 of them, and boy were they delicious.

For an appetizer, I had the beef carpaccio with wild and tame mushrooms, parmagiano shavings and truffle oil.  I loved it.  I’m not usually a big fan of carpaccio, but I could’ve just eaten a pile of this stuff for dinner instead.  Mmm.  The Everyman had a caesar salad with ciabatta croutons; he tends to stick to a few classics when we go out for dinner.  Everyman says: standard bacon-less caesar… boo hiss!

About the time our main courses were ready, they had a table for us in the dining room, so we left bartender Rob.  For the rest of the night though, he continued to look out for us.  (I love him in a non-sexual way – I’m always a sucker for great service) For our mains I had (big surprise) the seared sea scallops with a tomato jam, served on a mixed bed of beans and pasta.  It was tasty, and I really liked the jam, however I wasn’t a huge fan of the bean/pasta mixture, but that’s just me.  The Everyman had a striploin with buttermilk mashed potatoes, roasted root vegetables and caramelized onion jus, with a side of onion rings.  Everyman says: steak was well cooked and seasoned, but onion rings were a little soggy.

Since I was still sort of bummed out that we hadn’t made it to Eigensinn Farm, I decided to order myself a really bitchin’ dessert.  Well, that consisted of two desserts actually.  I had a vanilla bean creme brulee and a Soma chocolate ice cream.  The server who brought them out commented that I was “awesome” because I ordered two desserts for myself.  Well alright then, I’ll take it!  The creme brulee was fantastic, and really, it’s very hard to screw up creme brulee, although I managed to do it the time I tried to make a blueberry one, but that story will have to wait for another day.  The ice cream had a good chocolate flavor, but suffered from ice crystals, a sign that the ice cream had been lounging in the freezer a bit too long.  I can’t really fault them, the Soma place that supplies it is in Toronto, and I doubt they get weekly shipments of ice cream.  Overall our dinner was amazing, considering the circumstances.

And then there was our snafu.  When we were settling up the bill, Rob asked us if we wanted to charge it to our room, so of course we said yes, that would be quicker, wouldn’t it?  Off we went.  We did not find out until the next day when we were checking out of the Mosaic building that the Oliver Bonacini Cafe Grill is not associated with the building we were staying in, and therefore our bill was not charged to our room, but the room of someone in the Westin.  So off we went to the Oliver Bonacini Cafe Grill for a buffet breakfast and to get the matter sorted out.  Forty minutes later, all was handled, and for the hassle they ended up comping our meal, which was completely unneccessary, but nice.

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