Ahh, Rhapsody. I am fond of this place, and might be a lot biased to the food here. I interned, I guess you can say, two quarters during my education. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and being trained by Chef Autumn Wallace. She is amazing at what she does and, in my opinion, does not get enough recognition for her work. It is a difficult job to maintain a well oiled machine with temporary employees taking the reigns every 3 (now 4-5) months.
However, lets stick to food here. On the day of our wedding, my husband and I made reservations for a romantic chef tasting. Being very picky eaters, we were a little nervous about what Chef would present. To our delight, the 5 course meal was phenomenal.
We received Boursin Cheese with hand made herb crackers when we first arrived. The cheese, which is house made, was creamy and the right blend of salty and fresh herbs. The crisp crackers made an excellent dipping tool to shovel in the cheese.
The beer pretzels with cheese fondue was to die for. I know Chef spent a lot of time trying to match the right beer for the pretzels. I myself have hand made these in the kitchen and know how pain staking they are. The fondue was smokey and salty, an excellent cohort with the pretzels.
Then, then appetizer. For the life of me, I cannot remember everything that was in this dish. It was flank steak, I believe, with crispy tortilla shells. It was a version of the appetizer Chef made for the Spring menu. However, since the hubby loathes beans with every fiber of his being, she omitted the foul creatures. This dish was fantastic. The beef and tortillas worked well with each other.
The salad course: Spinach salad with pecans, blue cheese, fuji apples with an orange vinaigrette. The hubby bore with this one. He does not like blue cheese, or vinaigrettes but he liked the salad despite of it. I quiet enjoyed it. My only disappointment is that Rhapsody has the most delicious Walnut Vinaigrette. I would drink a whole vat of it if I could.
I believe around this time was the Rosemary focaccia bread with garlic infused olive oil. I have never been a fan of dipping my bread into oil. I have enough oil on my skin, I don’t need more to remind me that my skin has no idea that I am no longer a teenager. The bread, however, was scrumptious. Soft on the inside, crunchy on the outside. Sprinkled with chopped Rosemary, kosher salt and brushed with….yup, olive oil.
The entree. Odes could be made for this entree. The first, and only person to convince me that sweet potatoes could tastes like something else besides dirt. A 10 spice encrusted fillet mignon on top of a sweet potato puree with baby carrots and asparagus. Now, the only thing on this dish I would like is carrots, and I don’t even like cook carrots if they are not in soup. This is where I believe Chef has a true gift. All of those ingredients meshed so well together that both of us had no problem scarfing down everything on the plate.The plan juices of the beef made the puree exquisite. The asparagus was crisp enough to not be soft and limp but soft enough to not be raw. The carrots were sauteed in butter with salt and pepper and were amazing.
Now, for dessert. Before I get on with this particular course, I must confess that I was in my baking lab that quarter and had been working on menu development. I was tickled pink when my mystery basket dish can in second in the competition and thrilled when 3 of my desserts I worked on because 3 of 5 desserts on the menu. Moving on….we were delighted to find chef had created a root beer float with marshmallow ice cream, an extra large beignet, and strawberry mint sauce. The hubby did not like the sauce, which disappointed me because that was my recipe. (I found out later they were using too much mint.) But the other two components were fabulous. For those of you who do not know, a beignet is a New Orleans donut. It is pate choux that is deep fried and dredged in powdered sugar.
All in all, this experience was one of a life time. Being pampered by people I call friends was to die for. We even had sparkling grape juice, a play on champagne. It was work every penny and we are definitely planning on returning for another chef’s tasting.
I give the experience 5 stars!
Mini Chef
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