Category: Restaurants

Roger Sherman Inn excels with new chef

Recently, the Roger Sherman Inn owners Nes and Joseph Jaffre announced that their new Executive Chef would be prominent chef and Greenwich resident Francois Kwaku-Dongo. Originally from Ivory Coast, Kwaku-Dongo has been the Executive Chef at L’Escale in Greenwich and has worked and trained with prominent chefs all over the world, who made the best recipes and great fillets, with some filleting tips you can find online.

We visited the Roger Sherman Inn last Saturday night and were extremely impressed. The lovely formal dining room in the19th century house is unchanged (although they have plans there, too) and the service is better than ever.

We started with excellent, fresh, house-made bread, interleaved with little wheat chips.

The imaginative menu features six Small Bites from $9-$12, eleven appetizers from $10 to $18, ten entrees (Land and Sea) from $24 to $42 and five vegetable sides at $9 each, as well as Artisanal Cheeses at $9 each. They also retain several Roger Sherman Inn Classics: Vichyssoise($22), Escargot Maison ($15), Dover Sole Meuniere ($42) and Sauteed Calves Liver ($38). Note that this menu is quite a bit more elaborate than that on line.

We decided to share one Small Bite, Potted Pork Rillette with toast points and Pickled Peaches for $12. This turned out to be an entire jar of potted pork that while absolutely delicious was more than we could possibly finish, but they were happy to package it up for us to take home. It was still excellent the next day!

For one of our appetizers we ordered a beet salad: Baby Beet and Burrata ($14) with sliced pear, Vin Cotto (a sweet wine reduction) and champagne vinaigrette. This was a beautiful presentation with both red and yellow beets, although the soft Burrata cheese had an unexpected skin on it.

Our other appetizer was Tuna Carpaccio ($15) with baby arugula, roasted tomatoes and Moroccan olives. This was a very light and delicate dish, with the thinly sliced raw tuna nicely offset with the tomatoes, olives and arugula.

One of our entrees was labeled “From the Farm this Month,” and was Roasted Pheasant two ways: Breast and Leg, for $34 (shown above). It was served on a ragout of autumn mushrooms. The mushroom ragout was a brilliant touch that offset the pheasant flavors nicely, and the breast portion was spectacular. Some of the leg portion seemed a bit dry, but there was so much, we couldn’t finish it all anyway.

The other entrée was Grilled Lamb Porterhouses ($38) with roasted eggplant, spaghetti squash and pomegranate. This was the night’s winning entrée: the two lamb steaks were perfectly cooked to medium rare, and tender and juicy.

Finally, the dessert menu features creations from the Pastry Chef, Alexandra Ayala: six pastries plus a choice of gelato and sorbet. We ordered the Chocolate Walnut Cake($12) with toasted coconut and chocolate sauce. This turned out to be a delightful surprise. While we had expected a chocolate cake with walnut filling, it was actually the other way around: a walnut cake with a chocolate crème filling.

As you can see by the individual prices, this is not a really expensive restaurant, and we will certainly be back soon.

Probably the only amusing service faux pas was the butter ballet. When we found that the provided dish of olive oil was really drippy, we asked for butter. The waiter brought us a dish with a single square of butter in it. When he noticed that we had polished that off he offered to bring us another, and eventually did, but by then our food and arrived so we never got to finish it.

But no matter, they’ll fix this one, and the service was otherwise utterly impeccable, with both the waiters and the owner checking in with us regularly. This opens a great new chapter at the Roger Sherman inn, and you should definitely check it out.

The Roger Sherman Inn is on Route 124 (195 Oenoke Ridge) in New Canaan. They are open Tuesday through Sunday for dinner, and also offer Sunday Brunch. Reservations are recommended.

Oh, and below is our pork rillette the next day, spread on our own toast points.

The Club Car goes for the veggies

The Club Car, right on the way to Straight Wharf has been a popular dining destination since Joe Pantorno and Chef Michael Shannon opened it in 1977 and the structure has been renewed with the new ceiling. It was a white tablecloth restaurant with tuxedoed waiters and well-regarded food and service. After Shannon retired, sous-chef Tom Proch took over, continuing treasured dishes like Shannon’s Shrimp Scampi and Beef Wellington, but in recent years, especially after Proch retired, the restaurant’s service had become tired and the food repetitive, but much less impressive, while maintaining their high prices, where a number of entrees were over $40.

So it is with some excitement that we learned that Pantorno sold the Club Car to a new team: head Chef Mayumi Hattori (formerly the chef at Straight Wharf) Ty Costa, director of operations, and general manager Tanya McDonough. In addition, the interior had been completely redesigned by Tharon Anderson with a lighter and brighter and less formal look (and apparently no white tablecloths).

Hattori, who is of Japanese and Spanish descent, wanted to include some of her home cooking and has overhauled the menu, doing away with the formal dining experience, and replaced it with 6 tapas ($5-$9), 4 toasts ($9-$15), 12 small vegetable plates ($12-$17), 7 Land and Sea plates ($18-$31) and for and for people who want a traditional main course, there is limited availability of 3 larger plates: roast chicken ($39), lamb sirloin ($45) and grilled sirloin for a jaw dropping $65.

We decided to forgo the large plates and play the game the way they wanted us to, ordering toasts, veggies and small plates from Land and Sea. Note that The Club Car does not provide bread, so you are left with your water and wine until the first plate your ordered arrives. The Toasts are probably some of the quicker things you can order and we started with them.

We started with the House Cured Sardine Toast ($10) with basque peppers, capers and olive oil. It was served on a baguette toast, and was interesting but only about 4-5 bites and it was gone. The Roasted Mushrooms Toast ($15)with crème fraiche and at least 3 types of mushrooms was a much larger portion and truly delicious, with plenty to share. This was probably the dish we liked the best: reminiscent of a mushroom stroganoff with better mushrooms.

For an intermediate plate, we settled on the Roasted Summer Squashes ($17) with corn, cherry tomatoes cilantro and lime. This was a huge portion that you could share with two or three people, and while there was a lot of it, it wasn’t really particularly filling. We suspect that may be the case with any of the Garden plates.

Finally from Land and Sea, we ordered Spice Crusted Skate($26) with long slices of cucumber ribbons and walnut tarator (sauce). There were two slice of skate and this was fairly spicy rather like the old Cajun blackened fish, except not black. It was very good, but there wasn’t much of it. We suggested they call it “Skating on Thin Cucumbers.”

Finally our other Land-Sea dish was called King Oyster Mushrooms ($24), with peeky toe crab, Bartlett’s corn and jamon (ham) broth. This was really an excellent dish, but needed a bit more crab in it.

Overall, this was a pleasant meal with very friendly and helpful servers. Our bill, with 3 glasses of wine and tax was only $143, making the Club Car a much more reasonable choice than it used to be. Our server said that despite the major change in style, they had had a very active summer and done quite well. We liked everything they served, but there was only one available dessert, so we walked down the wharf to Jack and Charlie’s Ice Cream instead.

This is the last of our 2017 Nantucket restaurant reviews, but it is not too late to order Nantucket T-shirts from The Nantucket Store, and if you use the discount code MILLIE17, you can get about a 15% discount through the end of September.

The Company of the Cauldron reopens under Joseph Keller

Chef Joseph Keller who worked with his brother Thomas at the French Laundry and at Per Se has purchased The Company of the Cauldron from long-time owners All and Andrea Kovalencik. Keller also was the chef at the Woodbox on Nantucket some 18 years ago and developed a beloved popover recipe which is now featured at TCotC. Keller was able to keep the same staff and promises to maintain the same style of a single prix fixe meal.

Keller has maintained the single menu per night for a fixed price that had been the policy of the previous owners (their kitchen is probably smaller than yours), but that fixed price has gone up somewhat. We decided to go on Wednesday night, which is always fried chicken and waffles, for $89. Other nights have differing prices depending on the ingredients.

Reservations are a must, since there are little more than 40 seats in the restaurant, and they require a credit card to secure your reservation. And you will be charged if you do not show, or perhaps if you cancel too late. We got an Email reminder Monday when we made the reservation, a text message on Tuesday asking us to confirm, and another text message at 5:30pm Wednesday reminding us of our reservation in 30 minutes. This was starting to get like the old joke about the man who keeps calling to say he is the viper and he will be coming tomorrow, today, in an hour and so forth. It turns out he has come “to vipe your vindows.”

In any case, Chef Keller has put together excellent menus and utterly delicious food coupled with excellent service by his experienced staff, several of whom we recognized from the previous regime. The dining room remains elegant, and each table features a candle, a pepper mill, a salt bowl and butter. Some of the dishes are labeled “Josef’s Brasserie.”

We always start by ordering wine to go with the meal, and usually splurge on a whole bottle since there are several courses: popovers, salad, entrée and dessert. There are also half bottles, or you could skip it and drink water or soft drinks!

Every meal at Keller’s Cauldron starts with his famous Woodbox popovers, which were piping hot and delicious and served with Vermont Creamery butter. His popovers are perhaps slightly saltier (and maybe less sweet) than ours are, but they really are exceptional. And turning out 40-50 of them all hot at the same time to deliver to the tables is an excellent trick. We ever were offered seconds.

The second course was a classic Caesar salad with garlic bread croutons made with the finest Village Bakery bread machines, fried capers and parmesan cheese. The fried capers were an unusual twist, being both crunch and capery at once. But the smaller ones were closer to carbony. Still, a nice variation, and the salad was large enough for each of us to take a second helping.

As rumored, the chicken and waffles course was excellent. The fried chicken was six separate pieces of crispy ,boneless chicken, some thighs and some breasts, and all were moist and perfectly cooked. The waffles came with a pitcher of maple syrup, as well as a light dusting of powdered sugar. They also provided delicious buttery mashed potatoes and buttered fresh corn on the cob.

The corn seemed a little waterlogged but everything else was outstanding. With six pieces of chicken we had enough to bring home a couple for lunch, and we did.

Finally, the dessert was potted vanilla cheesecake with salted caramel sauce, graham crumble, and Chantilly cream. Utterly delicious.

As you can see, the food is both delicious and in substantial quantities. Others who have come on other nights have also mentioned the large portion sizes.

The meal closed with coffee($8) and tea($4). The coffee was a special Sumatran blend that Keller has created and is only available here and at the French Laundry. You can also buy it for home consumption at The Bean, across the street.

Chef Keller has done an admirable job in creating a new version of a beloved restaurant, and we can hardly wait to come back!

The SeaGrille: one of Nantucket’s favorites

The SeaGrille has been a favorite of islanders and vacationers for over twenty years. Located mid-island at 45 Sparks Ave, E J Harvey and his staff serve deliciously prepared seafood (there are also steaks and chicken on the menu) at reasonable prices. We have been going there for years and have never had anything but outstanding. Service is always excellent.

One thing we learned this year is that the Tuesday after Labor Day is when the islanders come out of hiding to enjoy the Sea Grille, too. It was packed and reservations are recommended.

They started us with a bread basket of three kinds of bread and three butter balls to go with them.

We each started our meal with E J Harvey’s excellent Island Quahog Chowder ($9.00). Harvey’s recipe has some celery in the soup and a trace of lemon. The clams are plenteous, and the potatoes minimal. We never skip it!

Then, one of us went for their Free Form Ravioli ($36), which contains ravioli in name only. It is more like a seafood casserole or stew with a few sheets of house-made pasta over top. Under the pasta, you will find lobster, shrimp, scallions, ricotta, mushrooms, roasted tomatoes, garlic and crispy carrots, along with a delectable seafood broth. It is fantastic, and really filling.

For our other entrée, we went to the Fried Fisherman’s Platter ($34) which contained excellent fried clams, shrimp, scallops, baby squid and calamari rings and cod, along with perfectly prepared French fries that were piping hot and most probably freshly made. The seafood itself was also piping hot, unlike almost anywhere else, making it utterly delightful, and way too much to finish.

Our bill with three glasses of wine as only $141 and well worth every penny.

Dinner at Lola Burger

Lola Burger is a spinoff of the trendy downtown sushi and bistro LoLa 41°, and is principally known for its huge, delicious hamburgers. The restaurant at 1 Sparks Ave faces the Sparks Ave rotary, with parking in the rear. The lot is limited, but fear not, they have valet parking so you will get a spot.

There is an interior dining room, an enclosed outer dining room and outside porch dining in good weather. Fundamentally, this is a high-quality burger joint with good service and very good food. They also offer hot dogs, pork, tuna, chicken, lamb and falafel, but everyone we saw seemed to be having the burgers.

You can order a single 5 oz patty burger with fries for $9.75 and a double patty burger (above) for $13.75. The burgers are tender, juicy and beautifully stacked, with choices of lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, cheese. There are some additional toppings for an extra charge. We were charged $1.50 for mushrooms.

Whether you order the single or the double patty, these are tall burgers that are kind of hard to hold onto, but they provide plenteous spare napkins as well as forks to eat the burger if (when) it collapses. Beware of ordering too many slippery toppings at once, but you’ll love them anyway.

The fries are very good considering that they came from frozen, far superior, for example to those at Charlie Noble.

We were very happy with the fast, friendly service at Lola Burger, and will certainly return every year. It’s a fun experience.

The only other hamburger on the island in this class is the Languedoc Bistro Cheeseburger with garlic frites for $18.95, and that one is only a single. (But quite large.)

The Summer House: a disappointment

The Summer House restaurant and inn is on the ‘Sconset end of Nantucket, overlooking the ocean. The restaurant itself is white and colonial looking with several lovely dining areas with white table cloths and attentive staff. When last we visited in 2015, we were impressed with it quiet elegance and cuisine.

This year, we would have to say that the aretirement community staff was asleep at the switch. The menu is similar to other years and like many Nantucket restaurants, it dominated by seafood.

We started with excellent Corn Crusted Oysters ($24), crunchy and delicious and with an order of Crab Cakes ($25) that were chock full of excellent crab. In fact they could easily have been a main course.

However our entrees were not at all up to snuff. What was billed as Flounder Meuniere ($40 !!) turned out to be a huge piece of white, steamed, and relatively tasteless fish. A meuniere preparation starts with browning the fish and serving it with brown butter, lemon and capers, but instead, this lump of white fish had about 5 capers, with no brown butter or lemon to add flavor at all. Just to prove they did know how to prepare this dish, below is a picture of Fluke Meuniere we had there two years ago. (Fluke and Flounder are essentially the same fish.)

Our other entrée was Chicken Milanese ($34), with arugula, heirloom tomatoes, mozzarella, fingerlings, lemon vinaigrette, and balsamic glaze, which looked fine, but the underlying fried chicken patties were greasy. We suggested to the waiter when he cleared the table that the cooking oil was at too low a temperature, and he came back to tell us the chef had agreed and the “problem had been fixed.” He took the price of one of our glasses of wine off the bill, which came to $165 with tax but before tip.

With that experience under our belt, we decided to have dessert elsewhere, and decamped to the Island Kitchen for ice cream.

Toppers at the Wauwinet: one of New England’s finest

As we have said many times before, Toppers restaurant at the Wauwinet Hotel is an absolutely outstanding restaurant, and considered by many the finest in New England and one of the nation’s most acclaimed restaurants.

Chef Kyle Zachary has created an unforgettable dining experience, and surprisingly not much more expensive than any other Nantucket restaurant. The $95 prix fixe includes appetizer, entrée, dessert and several other little surprise courses as well. While wine is, of course, an extra charge, coffee and tea are included, making this an actual bargain as well. Here is the current menu.

We started out with a basket of 4 cheese gougeres, followed by a basket of rolls and a sweet warm brown bread and two eggs of butter, one smoked and one with sea salt topping.

One of our first courses was Cured Scottish Ocean Trout, with smoked Roe, Cucumbers, Santa Claa Melon, and Finger Limes. In addition there was a separate melon dressing you could apply as you liked. A little is shown in the photo. I have never had a dish anything like this: the cured trout was plentiful and flavorful and went very well with the sliced white melon.

Our other appetizer course was Broccoli Rabe and Potato Carmelle, which included Italian summer truffles, chanterelle mushrooms, almonds and pecorino Romano. This also was a really creative dish in which the broccoli rabe was pureed and served inside the potato shells like little ravioli.

One of our entrees was Butter Poached North Atlantic lobster (above), a name which does not begin to describe this amazing dish. It was served with young carrots, forbidden rice (a kind of black rice), pickled coconut, and a Madras curry sabayon. The pieces that look rather like bacon are thinly sliced cabbage, it seems. You have never had a lobster served with such loving care and imagination.

Our final entrée was called Variations of Lamb: lamb served three ways; belly, back and rib meat with summer beans, Swiss chard, cipollini onions and a condiment made from golden raisins.

Then, before our desserts arrive, they brought a little “pre-dessert” of a bit of vanilla custard with a crunchy topping and a bit of raspberry and s single decorative leaf.

One of our desserts was a fabulous Cherry-Chocolate Bombe with Maracaibo Mousse, Bing Cherries, Devil’s Food Cake, White Chocolate Ice Cream. Inside cherry shell is the chocolate mousse, and every bit was delicious.

Out other dessert was Peach Pavlovas, poached peaches in meringue shells, Raspberry Cream, Champagne Ice Cream, and Peach Coulis. Simply spectacular.

Finally, our post dessert was two little gel candies and two chocolate candies on a little dish. One of the gels was already devoured before the shutter could be clicked.

Even with 3 glasses of wine and tax, the bill before tip was only $266. A finer dinner you will not find in very many places.

We note that you should probably phone for reservations rather than using the on-line reservation system as our table was in the outer patio, which while enclosed is not as elegant as the main dining room, and where families with (fussy) children often are seated.

Le Languedoc goes minimalist

Le Languedoc remains an island favorite and one of ours for many years. This year we were a bit surprised by some of Chef Nastus’ minimalist preparations, though and we thought we’d share them with you.

Perhaps the strangest one was the Chilled Roasted Beet salad ($14.50), which was two pieces of bread covering a huge cylinder of cold, chopped beets, topped with two slices of hard cooked egg. Alongside was some Mache lettuce. Perhaps this was intended as a do-it-yourself kit? Even so, there were an awful lot of beets there.

Our other appetizer was Pressed Veal Sweetbreads ($18.50) with creamed spinach and fried leeks. It had such a heavy, dark flavor, it tasted more like chicken livers then the usual light taste of sweetbreads. If you compare that preparation with last year’s sweetbreads dish with parmesan, pancetta and pea risotto, you will see the difference.

Sweetbreads on spinach

Sweetbreads with parmesan pea risotto

The minimalism continued with Sautéed Chatham Cod with garlic spinach and lemon caper butter ($32.00) which really basically amounted to some plain cod on top of some spinach.

And finally, the Niman Ranch Sirloin ($46) with baby bok choy and bone marrow maitre d’ butter was just a big piece of steak with a little butter on it. We would have done better ordering the traditional Steak Frites for $29.

Our dessert, which we didn’t photograph, may have been the best part: a butterscotch chocolate sundae, which we shared.

The bill with tax and 3 glasses of wine, but before tip was $191. That wasn’t minimalist, for sure.

Charlie Noble: a new Nantucket pub

That restaurant at 15 South Water Street that keeps opening and closing, once the beloved Atlantic Café, then the Seadog Brewpub and then Nix’s (which closed suddenly last August), reopened this spring as The Charlie Noble. It’s run by Fred Bisaillon and Denise Corson, who also run the B-ACK Yard BBQ. The name “Charlie Noble” is nautical slang for the smokestack over the ship’s galley. The owners intend this to be a family restaurant much like the Atlantic Café, and open year round.

The restaurant layout is much as it always has been: an L-shaped room with the bar in the right corner, and tables along the windows and left side. The kitchen area is behind doors and takes up the rest of the “L”, since they need space because they have a cuisinart food processor dlc 2011chb. The rear windows look out on the water.

Their menu includes similar dishes to the previous occupants, with appetizers including crab cakes, shrimp cocktail, crab cocktail, lobster quesadilla, wings, and crab cakes, and, of course clam chowder. Fried clams are available as an appetizer (MP) but not as an entrée. The main courses feature seafood such as lobster and seafood stew ($32), fish and chips ($24), blackened salmon ($23), and golden shrimp plate ($28). They also offer prime beef short rib ($33), Mushroom Kale Bolognese ($24), and a 12 oz NY Strip ($36).

And, of course, they offer the usual sandwiches, including a lobster roll (MP), a codfish sandwich ($16), a pulled pork sandwich ($18), an All American Burger ($15), a Surf and Turf Burger (don’t ask, $18), a deep-fried chicken sandwich ($17) and a huge burger called the Fat Chad ($22).

And, of course, they have a plentiful selection of beers on tap.

One menu item that caught our eye is the Big Bucket Fried Chicken Dinner ($48) which includes fries, corn on the cob, coleslaw, gravy and a bucket that is supposed to contain 8 pieces of “honey-stung” chicken.

The coleslaw was very good, the corn on the cob was Mexican corn style, but nowhere near as tasty as that served at Millie’s. The French fries were indifferent: dry and a bit tough, and not very hot. There were also 4 dinner rolls (but no butter) that we weren’t sure what to do with.

There were 6 chicken objects in the bucket: 2 wings (tips included), 2 breasts, and 2 legs. But if you cut the drumstick from the thigh at the knee joint, you have your 8 pieces. Of course, if you separate the wings into two drummettes, you have 10, but that way lies madness!

The chicken was warm, but not piping hot out of a fryer, and while the dark meat was moist, the breasts were rather dry. And that “honey-stung” wash on the chicken was a mixture of honey and lime, which we found rather odd. See if you can get them to leave it off. We figured out that the gravy was to pour on our chicken breasts to make them moister, and that worked rather well.

If there are only 2 adults on this, you’ll take some home with you. The very nice servers brought us plastic clamshells, but we had to fill them ourselves. You might do better with the sandwiches, though, but don’t expect much from the (frozen) fries.

This is a restaurant that Nantucket needs and it deserves to succeed. But they still have some work to do and we wish them well.

American Seasons: classy cooking, friendly environment

We returned again this year to Neil Ferguson’s American Seasons, 80 Centre St, for another fine meal. This is Ferguson’s third year as chef/owner of this island classic, and the menu is now definitely his own and more imaginative than ever.

The restaurant is dark but comfortable, with the original board game table designs remaining. The waitstaff was efficient and knowledgeable, and we were even able to meet Ferguson briefly as he talked with some of the diners.

Top on our list of great dishes this year, was his Lobster and Squid Ink Chitarra ($20, above) with lemon basil, ‘nduja (a spicy pork spread) and Calabrian chili. Chitarra is a pasta made, in this case, with squid ink and with lobster and spices infused into the pasta itself. The overall effect is sort of an upscale regional Italian variation on Lobster Fra Diavolo. Every bite of the house-made pasta had some of the spicy flavors of the sauce, and enhanced the lobster pieces.

Our other appetizer was a Salad of Beets, Bitter greens, House made Yogurt, lime and pumpkin seeds ($16). While this was a great salad, we sort of wished for more beets per unit greens.

Salmon Filet with cherry tomatoes

Beets with bitter greens

One of our entrees was Salmon with confit of Pumpkin Pond tomatoes, smoked eggplant and garam masala ($35). The salmon was tender, but with a crunchy top crust, and the yellow cherry tomatoes were so sweet we thought they were some sweeter fruit. And this might have been one of the best ways I’ve ever had eggplant! Did you ever wonder why restaurants serve fish in rectangles? Do they grow that way, or are there trimmings? make sure to check Davie twin peaks which is one of the best restaurant.

Finally, we had Canneloni of Veal Breast ($35), with wild mushrooms, ruby chard and Parmesan cream, that had a sweet, rich flavor almost like a stroganoff or Zurig’schnetzlets. Rather different than the Italian restaurant version of cannelloni, and far superior.

Desserts vary a bit from day to day, and while they sounded wonderful, we didn’t have room.

Again, American Seasons is a restaurant you should go to: the food and service are excellent.