My husband and I went to our No. 68 Project dinner on Sunday night! The chef was Justin Bittner and the mixologist was Justin Noel. We don't have photos of every single food and drink course, but we took quite a few photos.
The night's theme An unexpected relationship will become permanent.
There was a rosemary infused drink at the beginning of the evening that was paired with a tuna tartar appetizer. I don't eat seafood so I'm not sure of the taste. Everyone around me grabbed up several of the tuna and seemed happy to accept more.
I loved the first drink. I actually ended up drinking two :) good start!
We moved upstairs to the seated portion of the evening.
The first upstairs course was a chicken liver mousse with black truffles, on buttered brioche, with a little fresh salad on the side. I'm not a huge fan of liver mousse but I did eat a little bit on both of my pieces of brioche. The big plus of the dish was it came with two fancy salts on the side. Salty liver mousse was better
Next course was a prawn with asparagus and hollandaise sauce.
I ate the asparagus and hollandaise part of the meal and gave my prawn away to my husband
The drink paired with this course had coconut flavoring and I believe it also had a liquor that was bacon fat washed. I sipped this a bit but didn't finish the drink. It was rich.
The next course was a lobster and scallop dish. There were peas, green beans, bacon, onion and a cream sauce infused with lobster also on the plate. I tried the veg and bacon and tried to avoid the cream sauce.
The drink with this course had pineapple juice in it. I really enjoyed this cocktail and finished it off. I finished it off so quickly we had to take a photo of the girl next to me's drink (Kristan)
Wooohooo next course was pork tenderloin, with gravy, and a potato/celery root gratin. Did I mention my husband recently bought celery root to make french fries? When we ate with Carla Hall one of her recipes included celery root so we stopped at the grocery store and bought one. Hey we are trendy! I of course could eat this course and did. I also stole some of my husbands :)
The drink had ginger beer. I couldn't do much more than a sip or two of it. See how it's brown like a root beer? It also had sage. We were given the recipes for the drinks but I don't have the menu in front of me. There were actually like 6 ingredients in each drink. Some seemed labor intensive.
Cheese course! Gorgonzola cheese, with wildflower honey, and strawberries. I don't even like honey but this was good.
The drink was fiery and awesome. I drank all of mine and Kristan offered me hers. I didn't finish the second one though. I was getting full. This drink had strawberry and serrano chili infused vodka among other things. I liked that it was pink. I'm a sucker for pink drinks.
Here is the drink side by side with the last one. The food and drink timing was off by the end of the evening. We'd get the food, start diving in, and then we'd remind ourselves the drinks were coming and to save some food for the drink pairing.
Hello chocolate dessert! Vanilla cream on the plate, a sprinkling a pistachios. YUM. We had a giant spoon for eating this and it seemed really out of proportion.
The last drink was across the table. I didn't really try to drink this one. It had something called creole bitters in it. It was also very creamy and the garnish on the toothpick is the bacon. Remember the drink with the fat washed bacon? Here is the bacon part. You have to cook the bacon to make the fat to infuse the liquor.
and 4 hours later dinner was over and we all had to roll out of there. Too bad we all had to work the next day. I would have had seconds on all my favorite drinks
Here is Justin
and all of his bottles
The night's theme An unexpected relationship will become permanent.
There was a rosemary infused drink at the beginning of the evening that was paired with a tuna tartar appetizer. I don't eat seafood so I'm not sure of the taste. Everyone around me grabbed up several of the tuna and seemed happy to accept more.
I loved the first drink. I actually ended up drinking two :) good start!
We moved upstairs to the seated portion of the evening.
The first upstairs course was a chicken liver mousse with black truffles, on buttered brioche, with a little fresh salad on the side. I'm not a huge fan of liver mousse but I did eat a little bit on both of my pieces of brioche. The big plus of the dish was it came with two fancy salts on the side. Salty liver mousse was better
Next course was a prawn with asparagus and hollandaise sauce.
I ate the asparagus and hollandaise part of the meal and gave my prawn away to my husband
The drink paired with this course had coconut flavoring and I believe it also had a liquor that was bacon fat washed. I sipped this a bit but didn't finish the drink. It was rich.
The next course was a lobster and scallop dish. There were peas, green beans, bacon, onion and a cream sauce infused with lobster also on the plate. I tried the veg and bacon and tried to avoid the cream sauce.
The drink with this course had pineapple juice in it. I really enjoyed this cocktail and finished it off. I finished it off so quickly we had to take a photo of the girl next to me's drink (Kristan)
Wooohooo next course was pork tenderloin, with gravy, and a potato/celery root gratin. Did I mention my husband recently bought celery root to make french fries? When we ate with Carla Hall one of her recipes included celery root so we stopped at the grocery store and bought one. Hey we are trendy! I of course could eat this course and did. I also stole some of my husbands :)
The drink had ginger beer. I couldn't do much more than a sip or two of it. See how it's brown like a root beer? It also had sage. We were given the recipes for the drinks but I don't have the menu in front of me. There were actually like 6 ingredients in each drink. Some seemed labor intensive.
Cheese course! Gorgonzola cheese, with wildflower honey, and strawberries. I don't even like honey but this was good.
The drink was fiery and awesome. I drank all of mine and Kristan offered me hers. I didn't finish the second one though. I was getting full. This drink had strawberry and serrano chili infused vodka among other things. I liked that it was pink. I'm a sucker for pink drinks.
Here is the drink side by side with the last one. The food and drink timing was off by the end of the evening. We'd get the food, start diving in, and then we'd remind ourselves the drinks were coming and to save some food for the drink pairing.
Hello chocolate dessert! Vanilla cream on the plate, a sprinkling a pistachios. YUM. We had a giant spoon for eating this and it seemed really out of proportion.
The last drink was across the table. I didn't really try to drink this one. It had something called creole bitters in it. It was also very creamy and the garnish on the toothpick is the bacon. Remember the drink with the fat washed bacon? Here is the bacon part. You have to cook the bacon to make the fat to infuse the liquor.
and 4 hours later dinner was over and we all had to roll out of there. Too bad we all had to work the next day. I would have had seconds on all my favorite drinks
Here is Justin
and all of his bottles
Comments