We celebrate Valentine’s Day every year…just not on Valentine’s Day. Knowing the pitfall of going out on major holidays like Valentine’s or New Year’s Eve, we have acquired enough common sense to do our celebration on another day for real food that the chef wants to make, good service that the waiter cares to give, and at a realistic price that we don’t mind paying.
We decided our celebration would be a low key Sunday brunch at Amis on the day before. The restaurant is usually crowded and hectic but on this day, it was surprisingly tranquil and relaxing which gave us an rare opportunity to enjoy the exposed brick wall and nicely refinished hard wood floor décor mixing rustic and modern elements.
Prosciutto di Parma with Pear
I have never seen anything sliced so thin. I have also never tasted so much flavor from anything this thin. The meat was nutty and earthy. The oil drizzled on top along with the salt from the meat made it decadent and addictive. The pear was a nice touch to break up the saltiness in the dish.
This appetizer plate was a good companion for our Compari, grapefruit, and muddled basil cocktail. It was an expensive cocktail in a small glass, but it was a very delicious cocktail.
The mushroom was soaked in a butter marinade before cooking so Tourist Tree could not have it. However, the chef made a substitution with spinach, pepper, and tomato which made the Tree particularly happy. Not sure 100 % if she even liked the dish but the Tourist Tree devoured the dish before I even had made an attempt to move my fork across to her side of the table.
If you could call a pretty looking dish a looker, this dish would be a looker. On the bottom of the shinny stainless steel flat bottom wok like container is the Pecorino fondue, a soft polenta mixed with pecorino. It is topped with a semi-soft duck egg and pieces of guanciale. Yellow, white, red, and green from the chopped herbs finishes the color kaleidoscope of this dish.
Although it is called a pecorino fondue, the cheese flavor in the polenta was not overwhelming which I appreciated. The guanciale is similar to pancetta but is made with meat from the pig cheek, seasoned and cured by hanging dried. It was crispy, salty, sweet, fatty, and provided a wonderful contrast to the fondue. I loved the fat oozing into the mouth while chewing on the meat. The feeling of the fat and the flavor was beyond description. I love everything that has a runny egg yoke over it. The addition of the egg yoke did not distract the dish’s original flavor but definitely brought further enhancement to an already well composed dish.
Scrapple
This trattoria version of the Amish treat was made in-house with pork, minus the more interesting parts of the pig as commonly called for in the traditional method. In giving it the trattoria spin, polenta was used instead of buckwheat flour and cornmeal. The scrapple was nicely fried to a crisp on the outside while the polenta gave it a more dense consistency inside. The scrapple was very good dipped in the runny egg yoke, but it needed a bit more kick in the spice department overall.
A meal is not complete without dessert, even for brunch. This rice pudding was another looker dish from the kitchen. It’s creamy. It’s silky. It’s smooth. It’s eggy. It’s custardy. It’s like running your tongue down a swatch of velvet. The pine nuts and the thinly sliced pieces of dried fig added textural and flavor dimensions to the silky smoothness. This was a perfect rice pudding hitting all the right notes.
Colorful would be a good word used to describe this dish, both for the color of the components and also the flavors. This granita was not a frozen icicles of sugar water with some artificial flavor thrown in. The wine essence was present but the overwhelming taste of sugar was not. The acid and bitterness of the red grapefruit and the zaniness of the orange added a nice complement of flavors and brought a nice end of this lovely brunch.
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