Dinner at Carneros
Beautiful, fantastic, unbelievable. We just finished our dinner at Carneros. We sat at the bar so we didn’t have to order a traditional dinner, which is one of our great tricks to get all the best food for the best price. At Carnero’s they have a bar you can sit up that’s about 6ft that look over the kitchen. We sat right in front of an Argentine chef who’s putting together the most masterful dishes one at a time right in front of us. It was great because we were able to see what looked good before we ordered it.
The first thing we ordered was sea scallops that have some kind of foam on top that were incredible. The truffle foam on top was wonderful and the scallops were done the right way where they were only lightly cooked so they’re almost like sashimi when you eat them. Underneath the scallops were these tiny baby brussel sprouts that were buttery and a little crisp. I also ordered the foie gras. They give you a very generous portion. Underneath the foie gras was a piece of buttery toast and a nice thick slice of roasted pineapple. The combination of the three of them made it taste like dessert. We also ordered a beet salad with the goat cheese on. They were nice enough to put it into two portions and gave us each our own swan, which tasted like butter. I ordered two roasted oysters that came in little shells sitting on a bed of sea salt. Each one of them was perfect and unbelievable, screaming with flavor.
During the dinner, I’d been watching the chef cook this mixture of vegetables and I became more and more curious about it, because it was being used on many of the plates that went out. I asked our waiter about it and it was actually what they call “home fries”, although it looked nothing like fries. It was chopped potatoes, red peppers, onions, yellow peppers, and also pabuano peppers with bits of lobster. I know because I discussed it at lengths with the chef.
The Argentine chef who I got into a discussion with, turns out that he grew up in the northern part of Argentina and we had the opportunity to discuss Argentine barbecue. I asked him if he could give me the smallest spoonful of it at the end just so I could taste it and that was after we had our dessert of basal lemon pound cake with lemon gellato triangles and a dab of (???) cheese. Again, we were given two portions of it when we only ordered one and asked to have it split in half.
We also had espresso, wine and hot tea. And then, in the end when I asked him for a tiny taste of the home fries, he actually gave me a bowl with no charge. We walked out of there stuffed and the entire bill would’ve been about $85 except for the fact that the guy sitting next to us had a coupon for 10% off he got for staying at the hotel that he generously gave to us. Once we put the 10% off, it only came to 75%. We gave the waiter a $25 tip because he’d done such a fantastic job and we walked out there extraordinarily happy and satisfied.
The restaurant was beautiful. When you first see it, it looks very unassuming on a busy street and it’s off the side of a nondescript hotel almost looking like it’s in a mini-mall and you would never think that it was one of the most marvelous meals we’d have had in our life. The hotel is called the Lodge In Sonoma.
