The Spirit World

Huh? What are we doing talking about Halibut over on The Spirit World? Stick with me. All will make sense in a moment.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, it might be Salmon which appears to get all of the attention, perhaps it’s just because they have a good PR agency. But you’ll also often find great Halibut being proudly featured on menus in many fine restaurants.

Recently I had the opportunity to attend a special “Ode to Halibut” dinner that was put on by McCormick & Schmick’s in downtown Seattle. McCormick & Schmick’s is a nationwide restaurant group with more than 50 locations across the US, specializing in seafood. On this night there was a special focus on Halibut, and why I’m specifically paying attention to it is because the menu was specifically pairing different specialty cocktails with each course.

Food and wine pairing has of course been the de-facto standard for diners across the country, but equally exciting, if not more so in my mind, is the concept of pairing cocktails with individual dishes. There are a number of benefits here. To begin with the restaurant can now highlight the skills of both the chefs in the kitchen, and the chefs behind the bar. Second is that both the dishes and the drinks can be unique creations, which might only be available here. And thirdly is that it makes it very easy to pair individual drinks with each course and to individual diners at the table, while with wine it is often necessary when buying a bottle of wine to find something which works across multiple dishes and courses.

Chef Eric Naruszewics prepared for us the following lineup:

Appetizer:
Four Citrus Ceviche, with toasted tortilla chips
Served with: White Wine Sangria

The Cerviche was wonderfully constructed, with a nice balance of citrus and spices which teamed up well with the halibut. The Sangria was almost a fruit salad in the glass, a combination of apple, melon, and citrus with a light white wine along with some sweetener, either just simple syrup, or perhaps a triple sec (I forgot to ask). Unfortunately it didn’t quite match up with things as well as it could. It was too sweet, and didn’t have the complexities of finish to stand up against the ceviche. As I was drinking it I was thinking how much better a good gin punch might be here instead.

Salad:
Cashew Crusted Filet of Halibut, on a bed of mixed greens tossed with honey mustard vinaigrette, pears, and red grapes
Served with: Basil Grape Refresher

The cashews went really well with the halibut, with the entire dish also working really well as a follow on to the appetizer course. The Basil Grape Refresher was made by muddling red grapes, simple syrup and basil, then adding vodka and topping it off with ginger ale. Like the previous drink, I felt that this one was also too sweet, and likewise didn’t quite achieve the pairing which would have properly accompanied the dish. Just switching the vodka to gin would have been a good start, but cutting back on the syrup (if not leaving it out entirely) would definitely be recommended. I did like the use of basil however.

Main:
Seared Halibut, on udon noodles with fermented black bean and white miso sauce
Served with: Lychee Martini

The thing that almost everybody seemed to note about this dish, was how “just spicy enough” the black bean and miso sauce was. This Asian inspired dish really made a great impression, and even with the spicy kick, the halibut was still the star attraction. The Lychee Martini was made with vodka, a little cointreau and apparently shaken with a lychee sorbet, and garnished with a canned lychee nut. The pattern with the drinks was being continued here, in that it was again too sweet, and being made with vodka it was fairly two dimensional in flavor. A couple of us ended up squeezing some fresh lime juice into our drinks, which improved them considerably.

Dessert:
Spiced Asian Pear Tart, with a vanilla bean and cinnamon reduction
Served with: Blackberry Mojito

Part of me was a little disappointed that Chef Eric didn’t try to find some way to bring halibut into the dessert course as well, but then I’ve also seen some of those “Iron Chef America” episodes where fish ice cream was attempted, and perhaps I’m better off that he didn’t. The pear tart was delicate and flaky, and a nice gentle closer to the evenings meal. Pairing it with a Mojito however really didn’t make sense. This was essentially the biggest drink of the evening, and so that just seemed a tad odd. Something which would function better as a digestif would have been far more appropriate, even if it were a simple snifter of calvados.

My overall summary of this event is that the food was great, and Chef Eric did a wonderful job at selecting the individual dishes, what was unfortunate however is that for a menu which was attempting to create a food/drink pairing, that the same level of attention to detail wasn’t spent on properly selecting the drinks which were served throughout the evening. All of the drinks were overly sweet, and while aside from that most of them were reasonable well balanced, they also weren’t great choices to pair with the dishes that were served. But I do have to give them credit for trying!