Utopia

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Utopia Restaurant in Long Beach hosted a  "Summer Wine Dinner" tonight. They used to do a lot of wine dinners but have really scaled back in the past year or so. Could be the economy or the fact that every restaurant within the LA/Orange County area  has decided this is the way to go. I feel we are completely saturated with dinners.

I was glad to get parking. Since Long Beach has put in all those bicycle lanes on the streets it has taken away close to 40% of the avialable parking spaces.  It was great for the city ot understand the needs of the cyclist's but they forgot the needs of the car people. Not everyone lives downtown and not everyone is capable of riding a bicycle. And there is not enought parking structures or lots to make up the difference.

There were just two of us tonight at the table. Margie and me. It was a nice break not to have a larger group.

We started out with a Seafood Ceviche. I have had this before here and it is well prepared and good. Probably because of the Mexican cooks. Margie does not eat seafood . Utopia has always been good about substitutions. She was served fried artichoke hearts. This course was paired with a 2009 Sofia, Rose from Napa Valley. Nice wine. Perfect combination.

Next course was a Grilled Portabella Mushroom with a herb/shallot/balsamic reduction sauce.  Idea was good but the sauce was so way over with the vinegar. It tasted like several people in the kitchen added vinegar not knowing someone else did before them. It really detracted from the mushroom. This was served with a 2010 Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand. This wine is always a good wine. But they were selling it for $15 and you can get it around $12  to $14 almost anyplace else.

Main course was Grilled Filet Mignon with Garlic Mashed Potatoes and grilled vegetables. My steak was cooked the way I liked it. Margie said hers was a little more done than medium. Flavor was ok. The grilled vegetables had herbs and pepper on them. The potatoes were potatoes. Decent but nothing special. The wine for this dish was a 2006 Franciscan Napa Valley Merlot.  Nice wine if you like Merlot. It did pair well with the meat.

Dessert was the best of the meal.  A Chocolate Lava Cake with Vanilla Ice Cream and Chocolate Sauce.  I tried to eat all of mine but did leave one bite on the plate. This was so rich it was all I could be to get as far as I did. They served a Sandeman Ruby Port. Overkill on the sweet.  I really prefer my port with savory, like cheese. I waited until after dessert to drink the port.

This dinner was $45 with the wine. Compared to The Factory at $30 and you bring the wine, this was a better deal. Yes we get small portions compared to if we had ordered off the regular menu. But I don't eat large portions anymore anyway. So the size is good for me.

Utopia plans on doing another wine dinner in September. I will sign up for it if I do not have any conflicts. Amir was glad to see us and asked where we had been. Explained to him we seemed to have been dropped form the email list for some reason and only saw the dinner listed at Localwineevents.com. He took our email addresses again so hopefully it will straighten the matter out. But frankly I would not put money on it.

Margie won a bottle of wine and everyone was given tickets to the Laugh Factory in Long Baech.