fine dining

last year, at the ala midwinter meeting in philadelphia, a few of my emerging leaders and i dined at morimoto (iron chef morimoto's restaurant). we had such fun that night and i haven't gone fine dining lately, so i decided that i wanted to do so in denver. there were a number of restaurants i was interested in trying, but i settled on restaurant kevin taylor.

i went with liladhar, my coworker and friend. (i'm glad he agreed to go right away as i would have been hard-pressed to find someone else to accompany me.) we went for dinner on the day that i flew in. the setting was pleasant enough, nothing extraordinary, but the food was good.

we decided to do the tasting menu. i had the five-course one, and liladhar had the four-course.

for our amuse-bouche, we had lamb belly ravioli with truffle foam. this was quite good. i could definitely taste the truffle.

i don't normally drink, but i figured i might as well go all out. i ordered this cosmopolitan, which had pomegranate juice in it and a dash of italian soda for some bubbles. (i regretted this order later on in the evening because it made me sleepy and cranky. i really should know better.)

for our appetizers, i had the "caramelized snake river farms pork belly with honeycomb root vegetables, tellicherry pepper, barbeque broth." it was good. it was tender with a crispy skin. yum! liladhar had the "butter poached alaskan crab leg with black mussels, gold potatoes, tiny vegetables, saffron infused caviar."

for our soup, we both had the "roasted maine lobster and truffle bisque with sweet corn custard, chanterelles, herbed potato crisp." the custard was interesting, but not necessary. the potato crisp was made of two very thin slices of potatoes placed with herb in between and baked--that was good.

for my extra course, i had the "chilled poached maine lobster salad with red beet carpaccio, micro spinach, mango slaw, mango citronette." i don't normally like beet, but this was tasty--it was sweet. the tangy mango was also very good.

for the main entree, i had "roast colorado bison tenderloin and braised back ribs with golden delicious risotto, asparagus, tellicherry sauce au poivre." the meat was good, but i was not a big fan of the risotto. liladhar had the "snake river farms kobe beef ribeye and kobe cheek 'cordon bleu' with melting leeks, exotic mushrooms, sauce béarnaise." that was a good deal. on its own, it would have cost $65, but that was also the price of the four-course tasting, so he essentially got three extra dishes. i'm not a beef connoisseur so i don't know if the kobe (american-style) tasted any better, but the cordon bleu was delicious. that was probably the best out of the whole meal.

for dessert, i had the "bittersweet 'liquid center' chocolate cake with vanilla bean ice cream and chocolate syrup"--in other words, lava cake. i was going to try something else, but i gotta have chocolate. and, it was good, of course. liladhar had the "warm pecan cranberry coffeecake with vanilla bean semifreddo, persimmon jam, macchiato anglaise." this was fine, but i preferred my dessert.

afterwards, we got these after-meal chocolates. i was already full, but i couldn't let these go to waste. the bluish one was dark chocolate--that was good. the other one was too sweet--i didn't finish that.

it was a wonderful meal. there were other librarians there, including one i knew. and a guy proposed to his girlfriend while we were there. i think i'll have to do something like this at the annual conference in chicago.