Chianina on Tuesday

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Chianina ,  www.chianina.com,  several weeks ago advertised a "special wine dinner", so we signed up for it not knowing what the winery was.   Then we could find no information on it. The 3 of us decided to keep the reservation and find out what was going on.  Seems they decided not to do the dinner because of some kind of distribution problem but they neglected to let anyone know. Even the waitstaff. Our waiter thought he was serving at a wine dinner and when he arrived at work he was then told that no "special" wine dinner was being held. Sure seems like a breakdown in management.

Bob brought a 2004 Chimney Rock, Stags Leap District,  Cabernet just in case. They comped us the $25 corkage fee because of the screw up. Wine was nice had to open up after being decanted. Took about an hour.

I ordered off the Chef's Table menu at $50 for 3 courses. Had the Duck Liver Agnolotte with Asian pear, quince and persimmon sauce for the appetizer. Very rich and very good. The sauce was outstanding

The main course I selected the Branzino with fennel, olive and saffron glaze. Moist and the skin on the fish was nice and crispy. This is a fish that is very similar to sea bass. Moist and succulent. And again another outstanding sauce.

Dessert was a Toffee cake with caramel - rich but not too sweet. A good choice

They also served us a couple of amuse bouche's . Crab wrapped in a very thin slice of Asian pear and a saffron rice chip with diced,  fried pig ear and a Thai aoili.

One other person ordered off the Chef's Table menu. But they choose the wild mushroom appetizer,  the steak and the chocolate stout cake. Everyone was pleased with the food dishes.

They had the Salted Honey rolls along with a Seasame Crusted Sourdough roll.  I still like the rye rolls better. My favorites are the Salted Honey and the Rye. We ate a couple of baskets of these tonight.

Ran into Randy Kemner from Wine Country - he was being wines and dined by some wine distributors.  

Massimo told me that my friend Susan who is a independent wine distributor was seeing him on Wednesday. Told him to buy lots of wine from her.

Enjoyable evening, great food, good wine and very good friends - life is good - may be short but enjoy it as best as you can while you can. No one knows the future.