We were thrilled with our visit last year to the restaurant at Greydon House, Marcus Ware’s new, elegant restaurant, and said so in an enthusiastic article. We looked forward to our visit this year even though it was clear the menu had changed. (The current menu differs from that posted on their web site.)
The dining room has the same casual elegance as before, but we were greeted by rhythmically repetitive pseudo-disco music, whose volume increased when more guests arrived. Since it was making it hard to talk, we asked that they turn it down, and they complied.
Since one of us decided on a light vegetable meal and the other on duck, we each got wine by the glass. This turned out to be a good deal at $15, since many of the wine bottles were priced close to or above $100.
They quickly brought us their delicious focacia and a dish of butter patties so soft that a couple of swipes of our knives took up all the butter. We asked and they brought more.
For one appetizer, we ordered Hudson Valley Foie Gras Terrine ($24) with strawberry gelee, pistachios and roasted brioche. For comparison, we also show you last year’s version where the foie gras was “sandwiched” between a peanut butter crust and a cherry gelèe, and served with brioche, strawberries and figs. That version was substantially better, and there was considerably more of it.
Foiie gras 2018 Foie gras 2017
Our other appetizer was a Summer Salad ($18) with petite salad greens, roasted beets and aged gouda cheese. The beets had a pretty strong flavor to have been roasted, and tasted pretty earthy; the salad was mostly bitter greens. Last year’s version was Pumpkin Pond Farm Salad ($16) which was made up of yellow corn, peaches, blue cheese, pine nuts, radishes and lettuces. More imaginative and better tasting.
Beet salad 2018 Summer salad 2017
Since the duck was coming soon, we asked for salt and pepper in case we needed it. We had to ask three times before someone produced some. It turned out we had no need for the salt, but adding a bit of pepper was nice. We noticed that last year’s silver salt and pepper mills have been replaced by 2 little dishes and a spoon.
The Roasted Duck Breast with cherries, sweet potatoes and broccoli rabe ($46) was the best dish of the evening. The duck was tender, juicy and flavorful, cooked medium rare. The sweet potatoes were actually whipped with conventional potatoes to make a milder mix and that worked very well. “Cherries” may be a slight exaggeration as we found two whole cherries and a few small slices. Say 2.2 cherries. And while chefs like to serve charred broccoli rabe, these were scorched to ash. Not that great.
The Poached Artichokes ($42) was probably the biggest disappointment, served with beet ricotta gnudi and Nantucket honey. There were little artichoke halves on the plate, amounting to three artichoke hearts. Call it a half-hearted presentation. The artichokes were pretty flavorless, and despite the presentation, this was an awfully small amount of food for $42. We didn’t think much of it.
They never offered to refill our wine glasses, so we saved some money, but would have preferred another glass.
We chose to skip dessert and head for ice cream at the Juice Guys, but we noticed that they aren’t giving away little boxes of chocolate this year.
Overall, this was pretty disappointing and we hope they get back into gear by our next visit.
Food Science Institute 