Category Archives: Food and Wine

Nice digs, decent beer….service sucks

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On our way back from Half Moon Bay we stopped off at Highway 1 Brewing Company. (Sidebar) The bathroom was huge!
Nice little spot with decent beer, nothing that I loved……but I am a wimpy girly beer drinker so for real beer lovers it’s probably pretty good. The service was horrid. The girls behind the bar moved at snail speed. Doc and I were going to stay and share a beer after our tasting flight but none of the bartenders came around so finally I asked for our check and we left. Good spot if your a hard core IPA lover and have a ton of time to wait for service; otherwise keep on driving.

Carmel trip goes bad…….

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So Doc and I decided on a last minute one night getaway. While researching where we should go that was not too far I found Carmel Valley Ranch. It’s rated very well on all the major sites so I decided to call them directly and see what they had to offer. I spoke with Moses, one of the “reservations consultant”. He was extremely pleasant and helpful on the phone. He found me a great “midweek” special. Still, being the upscale facility it is it was not cheap to say the least.
We started out our travels stopping at Scheid tasting room in downtown Carmel. If you recall in our last Carmel excursion we loved this place. Natalie was our host and she was very nice and friendly to speak with. Of course the pinots were great and we found a new “table red” called Triple Layer Red 09 that was fabulous and reasonably priced at 28$ a bottle.
Next stop was Wrath. You may recall this is another must try if you are in Carmel that we discovered on our last adventure. Michelle was our host and she was a delight. Very friendly, knowledgable and inviting. We tasted some delicious pinots including a new favorite of mine called San Saba 2010. Fabulous!
I had decided that Doc and I should definitely eat in since our room was supposed to be amazing so we headed to The Cheese Shop to pick up an array of tasty treats for our evening in. Dan was our cheese connoisseur who was great! He took us through a cheese exploration and helped us pick out quite an assortment of delectable cheeses.
On our way we went, plenty of fine wine and cheese to enjoy at a stunning resort. We were greeted by friendly staff and took in the amazing views. We were carted to our suite where we were pleased with what the room had to offer. A big spacious beautiful living room with a huge bathroom and a nice sleeping area with a king size bed, fireplace and balcony. We put our champagne and cheese in the fridge and headed back out to explore. We hit the hot tub that was spacious with beautiful views of a golf course and nature. We enjoyed a delicious cocktail (or two) and two small plates of appetizers. The appetizers were very good. We headed back to our room via a nice walking path. We decided to eat our snacks in the living room when around 9pm I got up to floss my teeth after getting a few pieces of salami stuck when I noted in our trash can in the bedroom were remnants of what was obviously a good time (well multiple good times) had by some couple. I was seriously dumbfounded that a resort of this status would not thoroughly clean their room. Doc called and housekeeping was there shortly to take the garbage away. A manager called back and asked if we would like to move to another room. Being after 9pm after our belongings had been put away we declined. A little while later the manager called again and informed us that our room would be comped. I emailed Moses letting him know of my disappointment. By then our entire romantic evening was toast. We got up the next morning and received another phone call from a different manager apologizing again and reiterating our stay would be taken care of by them. We did have a delicious breakfast and got to see some wild turkeys running around the property.
So, all in all it was a beautiful facility but was such a disappointment to find something so gross in our room that has just left a bad taste in our mouth. The staff was very helpful and the managers did do the right thing by taking care of our bill but I don’t think we will be returning to their establishment. If we do, we will definitely update you on how it went the second time around; but like I said for the cost of staying there nothing like that should EVER happen.

FTF goes back to School

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We have been talking about taking a wine tasting class for a while but have not been able to get anything on the books. Then, out of the blue, we get a text from Brax that he had a friend who is a sommelier and will give us a personal wine tasting class (very good to have friends like this). So the FTF got together with some friends and went back to school. We have all been educated on the art of wine tasting at some point, but it is usually piece-meal, hear and there tips, so it was good to sit down and learn how to evaluate a wine, step by step, what to look for and how to describe what you are tasting. I won’t go in any great details because if you are really interested in being able to dissect a wine like this you should definitely take a class from a professional, but did you know that white wine gets darker with age and red wine gets lighter? We had a bunch of fun and learned a lot and then did some blind tasting to try to identify the type of wine we were given (we did pretty good barring a couple of California curve balls, even got the appellation on some of them). So don’t be surprised if you start to see descriptions like sawdust, burnt toast, kumquat zest or jolly rancher (all recommended descriptive words) in our future blogs. Cheers!

Nicks Next Door with Terry and Kuk

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2013-03-19_19-05-58_472After talking about it for just about a year we finally got Brax and Hill to join us at Nick’s Next Door for dinner in Los Gatos. What used to be Nicks on Main, a small but cozy storefront restaurant that felt packed in and busy all the time, in a good way, is now a posh building all on its own with outside/fireside seating. Nick is moving up in the world. Wanting to ensure we had wine to match the meal we know we were going to have we brought a ’10 Terry Hoage 5 Blocks and Brax and Hill brought a ’09 Kukkula pas de deux. Of note, after reviewing their wine list you will not be disappointed with the choices if you leave the wine to Nick. The list is long with lots of variety and many excellent choices.

Before I go into detail about the meal (getting hungry thinking about it) I want to say a few words about our wine selections. To be honest, I was a little worried. Kukkula wines are generally big, the kind of wine that goes well with spicy food or a big piece of meat. Terry Hoage wines, while they have a lot of flavor, are generally soft. The kind of wine you want to drink all by itself. I was concerned that the Kukkula was going to overpower the food and the food was going to overpower the Terry Hoage. Happy to say that I was dead wrong on both accounts. Both wines paired incredibly well with all the food. The Kukkula softening and blending much better than anticipated and the Terry Hoage stepping up to all the flavors in the meal. We either got really lucky or we are getting really good.

On to the food.  To start Troya and I shared the warm spinach salad with goat cheese, roasted shallots, a crispy onion ring with a smoked bacon vinaigrette and the mushroom soup. The salad was good, but with all the powerful ingredients I was expecting a bit more flavor. The soup was great, very nutty and flavorful.  We all shared the Risotto Croquettes with parmesan cheese and confit of pancetta, the Steak Tartare with pommes frites and a fried egg on toasted sourdough, and the Dungeness Crab Toast on sourdough with lemon-basil aioli. The risotto Croquettes were good, but seemed to be missing something and did not stand up to the other starters. The steak tartare was awesome and the fries that come with it put mc-y-d’s to shame (not an easy thing to do). The Dungeness crab toast was good but lacked the crab flavor that I was hoping for, seemed to be drowned out a little.

Now a quick word of warning. Nicks Next Door is the type of place that is torture trying to decide what entrée you want. Every time you think you have made up your mind you get the feeling you are going to miss out on something else. So what did the FTF do when faced with such a dilemma, we thought of you, our readers. Selflessly we decided to pick 5 entrees to split between the 4 of us so we could review as many of the entrees as possible. Oh, the sacrifices we make……..We finally settled on the Chilean Sea Bass with chilled artichoke hearts, braised fennel and a pepper and nicoise olive ragout, the Abalone special, the Pan Roasted Colorado Lamb Chop with rosemary gnocchi, english peas, morel mushrooms with a red wine demi, the Caramelized Scallops with duck fat infused faro and roasted red pepper sauce and the Orrechiette Pasta with Duck Sausage, roasted peppers, sweet onions, carrots asparagus and tomatoes.

It’s a lot of fun to be able to taste so many incredible dishes but you have to be 2013-03-19_20-15-34_176careful that you clean your palate in between tasting or you lose the subtleties of some of the flavors and some of the more delicate dishes will be overpowered. It was interesting that we all had our own favorite, and that my favorite was last on some of our lists. For me, I put the Orrechiette Pasta with Duck Sausage first. The pasta was very good, and the sauce was nothing special, but the duck sausage meatballs were incredible and carried the entire dish. Next was the Pan Roasted Lamb Chop. Done well lamb is one of my favorites and this had all the qualifications. Tender, not gamey and the gnocchi and mushrooms with the demi was a flavor fest (this is the one that could overpower some of the other dishes). Following this was the Carmelized Scallops. Not much to the plate, but they  were phenomenal.  Not fishy or salty like some scallops can be, not too mushy or rubbery like others can be. Incredible flavor and perfect texture. Next was the Abalone. I have only had abalone a couple times before and its had been very tough although it has very good flavor. This was very tender, not chewy at all. The flavor is somewhere between calamari and conch. Last was the Sea Bass. This dish was still very good with lots of flavor but it was very subtle and could not stand up to the other dishes or the wine. Likely our fault for ordering it with all the others.

All in all our second visit to Nicks was a fabulous night out and we have converts in Brax and Hill. Likely because of expectations, we did not leave as starry eyed as the last time, typical for second visits, but Nick did live up to the challenge and I would recommend a visit to anyone in search of fine food in the South Bay.