[But the first day of fall isn't here until this coming Friday, so there. And what can I say, the seasons in 2011 have been a bit discombobulated anyway...]
Tiffany and I each chose the chef's tasting menu, and I'd like to rave a bit about that.
Tasting menus, while not new to the hospitality arena, are not something that people can regularly access. I'm not talking about the appetizer sampler platter here; I'm talking about a wonderful process in which one goes to a chef offering such a menu at his or her restaurant, then naming one's price (how much you want to pay for dinner that night), then sitting back and relaxing as each course makes its way out to your table in the caring hands of the chef. The chef chooses, you don't, so you really don't know what's coming. But that is part of the fun, isn't it?
This is not a fast-food situation, people. I think Tiffany and I were there for almost 4 hours. And that's really what a sublime dining experience should be: an event spent around a table enjoying brilliant, artistic food. I wouldn't rush it one minute.
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Before I get into the details of our chef's tasting experience, I have good news to share about Hitchcock: this fall, the restaurant plans to expand into the adjacent storefront to include a small deli featuring charcuterie, local produce, grass-fed beet, wild fish and seafood, locally sourced eggs and European-inspired espresso. The opening for this second storefront is slated for Thanksgiving. Consider it a sign that Hitchcock is fast becoming a permanent fixture in the Bainbridge landscape; few eateries can survive these economic times like McGill's has, and with a new carry-out side business, there's more certainty than ever that this restaurant will thrive even during the off season. Islanders like to keep it local, and they demand quality. Hitchcock has succeeded on both fronts.
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Back to my dinner with Tiffany... I opted for a wide-ranging $50 meal and, by the end of the night, I had noshed eight separate dishes, shared two desserts and enjoyed a delicious spritzer of pomegranate and lemon juice rimmed in sumac sugar. For me this was easily as great an experience as going out for a less-than-gourmet dinner and catching a movie. Better, actually. McGill's menu is transcendent.
Ours was a July menu and, along the bottom of the fresh sheet there is a little note:
Our food is local, prepared in-house at its foundation, organic, or all of the above. Much of our food is brined, cured or seasoned to order--if sensitive to salt, please make mention.
I'm in. Not only do I really appreciate the locavore perspective, scratch cooking and organic growing for its sustainable practice, but I love flavor, and flavor means salt.
(I make no secret out of the fact that I think the 80s and 90s were a terrible time for cooking because of the health police's devilry made of dietary sodium. I hope people have figured out by now that seasoning fresh whole food with salt is not the culprit here, but the humongous amount of sodium used in pre-packaged, processed and fast foods which is degrading the collective American diet.)
Below, I've detailed the courses from my Hitchcock repast last July. Today, visiting their website, I notice that a version of the Salish Blue clams, which includes manila clams as well, still remains on today's fresh sheet, and the pork belly with cabbage is also still there, though it's currently being adorned by stuffed zucchini blossoms (yummy!).
There are other menu items we didn't try that night that seem to be more or less standard, like the Marcona almonds with pimenton and the Duck liver mousse, but by and large, each day the menu undergoes some reinvention as Chef McGill sorts out the local produce as the season passes through. Today you'll find roasted beets that weren't on the menu last summer; and last July's Asparagus gnocchi with green peas is now seasonally reflected in a switch to summer squash with bleu cheese.
This is the spirit of locally sourced, seasonal cooking: make the best use of what is fresh RIGHT NOW. It's fresher, there's less food waste, and it supports the entire community, from farm to table.
My Hitchcock Chef's Tasting ~ THE MENU
Bites
~ Oysters ~
Hamma Hamma select oysters with a hibiscus flower gelee and bronze fennel frond
Amai oysters, naked, with a slice of lemon
Hamma Hamma, for those who don't know, is an oyster growing area off the Hood Canal. The Amais come from Discovery Bay in the South Sound. Both were delicious. The Hamma Hammas were wonderfully briny and mild like I've come to expect and the gelee was a nice foil. The Amais are "tray-to-beach" shellfish cultivated by merging two growing methods to produce a firmer oyster; I found them to be sweet and unusual, like no other oysters I've eaten.
Cold plates
~ Fish ~
Marbled king salmon tartare, caper, lemon, shallot, dill, horseradish, creme fraiche
~ Charcuterie ~
Hitchcock lonza, grape granita, olive oil
I'm pretty sure I could eat bucketfuls of that marbled king salmon tartare. Not a delicate thing to say about a delicate dish, but this was FANTASTIC.
Hot plates
~ Vegetable ~
Wenatchee asparagus, tempura, lemon, aioli
~ Clams ~
Salish Blue clams, Laughing Crow garlic scapes, fregola sarda, parsley
~ Pork ~
Pork Belly, Tani Creek collard greens, Hitchcock bacon, Laughing Crow cabbage
~ Beef ~
Grass-fed hanger steak, roast fingerling potatoes, PX sherry gastrique, cress
These clams were beautiful, with shells almost as blue as mussel shells can be. This was a dish meant to succeed for my palate... I love garlic scapes (I've bought them from Laughing Crow farm myself!) AND fregola sarda (a kind of pasta similar to Israeli couscous) and the garlicky broth tied this dish together quite nicely.
The hanger steak was also quite juicy and cooked just right, and the potatoes and cress inside that gastrique were also very flavorful, perfectly seasoned.
Desserts
Watermelon sorbet with anise hyssop
Coffee profiterole with honey and pistachio
I liked the palate cleansing aspect of the fresh sorbet after eating two plates of rich meat, and now I'm inspired to grow my own anise hyssop. It gave a lovely herbal touch to the fresh sweet melon ice. I'm also a big fan of coffee at the end of every meal and, though we didn't have any this night (it was one of our warmer nights this summer), the profiterole took care of that... The honey had a distinct flavor (not sure what kind it was, but it was definitely an artisan variety) and you can never go wrong with pistachios in desserts, if you ask me. This was a nice end note to the whole dinner.
And did I tell you how much I enjoyed chatting with Tiffany? Hitchcock is the perfect place to enjoy an expertly crafted meal in a relaxing, low-key bistro setting. I definitely recommend you start with the chef's tasting if you are going for the first time; you'll be so glad you did.
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Hitchcock Restaurant
133 Winslow Way East, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110
206.201.3789
Urban Spoon link
Facebook link
Follow @HitchcockRestaurant on Twitter
Bainbridge Island Review article (September 12, 2011)
Seattle Times review (August 22, 2011)
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