We managed to order different things for everything for a change. Now, I just need to figure out how to take better pictures and stop overexposing things (although food on white plates on white tablecloths always presents a challenge).
Beginning with a cold cantaloupe soup, Jon started off the creative menu combinations. His soup was enriched with crème frâiche and garnished in the center with some cherry compote. He liked it, saying that it was pleasantly sweet without being too much so.
For his main course, he chose the chicken, an interesting presentation in a riesling wine reduction studded with candied oranges and served on a bed of escarole with some cherries and olives as garnishes and strewn with toasted pine nuts.
His dessert was a traditional vanilla crème brulée served in a little square dish and accompanied by a soft ginger snap. The top sugar crust was cold, so it had been made in advance instead of being broiled immediately prior to service; he liked it nonetheless.
Ryan began his meal with an expensive $7 bottle of sparkling mineral water. He chose the sweet yellow corn soup with green pepper crème frâiche and chive oil surrounding a little mound of conch strips in the center of the soup plate. The warm corn soup smelled good, though Ryan thought it tasted like canned creamed corn to him, and he (not surprisingly) didn't like the conch at all because it was chewy and he didn't like the texture.
He was being very adventurous today, though, because he followed the corn-conch soup with the salmon and calimari entrée. Two nicely grilled cigars of squid rested under the edge of a nice slab of basil roasted salmon. He liked the salmon, though he wasn't overly fond of the squid ink glaze under the fish, and he gave me his squid, since he doesn't like that, either. I thought the squid was tender and delicious. With the salmon came an assortment of halved cherry tomatoes, some wilted spinach, and little sprouts of broccoli.
He got a very pretty square of chocolate cheesecake for dessert garnished with black cherries and candied almonds. The cheesecake looked to be on a chocolate cookie crust and the chocolate-swirl cheesecake mixture was topped with a layer of chocolate ganache. A big glass of milk accompanied his dessert.
I began with the arugula, endive, and white asparagus salad. I was excited that they served the newish red endive hybrid, something not that commonly seen out of California. Mixed in the salad were blue cheese crumbles and walnuts, and everything was tossed in a light plum vinaigrette.
For my main course, I picked the braised pork osso bucco. Now, osso bucco has long been a favorite of mine, but it ordinarily is made from veal leg shank rather than pork, so this was a new experience. Butterfield 9's osso bucco was nice, but it wasn't the fall-off-the-bone tender that is usually a feature of the veal version. They did not, alas, provide me with a marrow scoop, since the primary reason osso bucco is served is so the diner can eat the delicious bone marrow inside the "bone hole" (the words "osso bucco" mean "bone hole" in Italian); I was, however, able to use the sharp, thin, point of the meat knife to extract the bone marrow from the shank bone. The pork rested atop a bed of cheesy risotto and the entire dish was "garnished" with a number of braised vegetables. I wanted to eat every last morsel from the plate, and was tempted to lick my plate clean!
For dessert, I had cantaloupe sorbet garnished with a fresh strawberry half, which was fine, though rather mundane.
We had a lovely time at Butterfield 9 today and we're looking forward to a repeat visit. I'm also looking forward to having Jon cook me some Syrian food after he gets settled into his new U Street apartment next week!
Here are Jon and Ryan in their Kody poses:
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