| Category: | Restaurants | | Cuisine: | American | | Location: | Beaver Creek, Colorado |
Casey and I visited this restaurant as a special treat while on vacation. It must be said that there are no bad restaurants in Beaver Creek, and I am no gastronome. But for what it's worth, here is my review.
This restaurant features farm-raised elk prominently on the menu. There is also seafood, duck, chicken, and lamb from which to choose. Everything sounded so enticing it took us a bit to decide what we wanted.
For the appetizer, we had a mushroom dish that I can't remember the name of. It consisted of three large mushroom caps filled with a blue cheese and ground elk mixture. These were lying in a butter sauce (I think it was a simple roux) that had very little salt in it - the perfect counterpoint to the highly salty mushroom filling. The mushrooms surrounded a central dollop of mashed potatoes. In the mashed potatoes was a garnish of something fried golden brown and waffled so thin that it nearly looked like a piece of screen - it was a fancy potato chip!
Casey had the "Pepper-Crusted Elk Medallions". This was a strong, rich, american-to-the-core dish. The melt-in-your-mouth-tender elk was sliced 1/4" thin, coated with a wonderful pepper rub, and lightly seared. These slices were laid over a mound of perfectly buttered and salted mashed potatoes. A cherry-balsalmic vinegar glaze was ladled over either side of the elk, and a mix of bean sprouts, snow peas, and julienned carrots smothered it. The whole dish was topped with what I think were deep fried chives. They reminded me of super-fancy version of the fried onions that top green beans at Thanksgivng. Actually, it's probably what fried onions dream they could be someday.
I had the special of the evening: sushi-grade ahi tuna with orange-pepper crust. The tuna was cooked even less than the elk was - just a scant millimeter of cooked tuna surrounding beautiful red raw center. Like Casey's dish, the slices of tuna (probably about a half-dollar in size each, and a scant 1/4" thick) were laid over a mound of "black thai rice". This rice looks almost like caviar at first glance - fat nearly round shiny black grains that stick together. The rice was cooked in coconut milk (a wonderful way to cook rice, by the way) with a touch of curry, enough to give it a bit of a pleasant bite. This was also topped with the bean sprout/snow pea/julienned carrot vegetable mix.
My entree was so much more delicate than Casey's, and to me, seemed to show the range of the chef's abilities. While Casey's punched you in the mouth with flavor and made you beg for more, my dish took your hand softly and whispered sweet nothings in your ear. It promised orange pepper, but delivered coconut milk and curry.
For dessert, we chose the "Wild Blueberry Peach Mango Cobbler". It was served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on one side and two dollops of freshly made whipped cream on the other. The cobbler top wasn't soggy (wish I could do that with *my* cobblers) and had enough chewy-crispy texture to offset the soft fruit. Never really tasted the mango, it was mostly blueberry flavor, but still wonderful with the whipped cream and ice cream. Pretty good for a non-chocolate dessert (the one chocolate dessert on the menu had raspberry sauce on it. Raspberries make me ill. Feh.).
All in all, a good experience. And expensive enough to be a once-a-year experience.
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