Grand Marnier and Cigar Dinner, Washington, D.C.

Last night I had a lovely time at a "Grand Marnier and Cigar Dinner" at a restaurant downtown called McCormick and Schmick's, as the guest of a priest friend of mine who, as it turned out, was their guest expert on the history of Grand Marnier. Also at our table was Lee, the cigar expert; Carrie, the Grand Marnier sales representative; and Carrie's friend Kathryn, who turned out to be quite fascinating. She's a biological researcher working on the human genome project up in Rockville and she's also simultaneously doing another graduate degree at Johns Hopkins. She invited me out to Herndon this afternoon to watch her play field hockey, but it's in a place that requires a car, so I'm not going to go. Coincidentally, Fr. Declan and I were the only men at the dinner wearing bowties.

Since we were a little early, while we waited for the restaurant's guests, we had a couple of rounds of cocktails with the girls drinking wildly flavored martinis (I remember one was a strawberry lemonade something), Fr. Declan drinking his standard Tanqueray No. 10 martini, and I sipped on kir royales. We were also given little miniature snifters with tastes of a new Grand Marnier product called Navan, which is a premium vanilla flavored cognac that was actually pretty tasty.

At this point, the cigars began to arrive. I didn't actually sample them myself (everyone else at the table, including the girls, was puffing away), but I did bring them home. We got free cigar cutters that look kinda dangerous to me. Along with the first cigar, they also brought a small snifter of Grand Marnier--some people dipped the end of their cigar in the GM before putting it in their mouth. There were three cigars presented, in increasing order of heaviness and flavor. The first two were from the Ashton house in the Dominican Republic. The third was a Honduran cigar "La Aroma de Cuba" from the Marquis house. Lee talked about them all at length and gave better names and identifications, but not being a smoker, that all went in one ear and out the other. The one interesting thing that I remember, though, is that the very best tobacco leaves for cigar wrappers are not from Cuba, but from Connecticut!

When the hors d'oeuvres arrived from the kitchen, we were served GMTs—Grand Marniers and tonics, a remake of the classic gin and tonic. The hors d'oeuvres were yummy. My favorite were these great big sea scallops wrapped in bacon. They also did chicken firecrackers (think spicy chicken-stuffed egg roll, cut on the bias) which were tasty and some very nicely done Rhode Island calamari. There were three choices for salads, a house salad (mixed greens, blue cheese crumbles, balsamic vinaigrette), Caesar salad, or a wedge salad (iceberg wedge with tomato slice, cheese crumbles, and blue cheese dressing). The wine was a 2002 Green Point Yarra Valley Chardonnay, from Australia. The wine was okay, but a little too light for that stage of the evening after all the cocktailing and heavy appetizers.

There were several entree choices. I had the 18 oz ribeye with mashed potatoes and asparagus, but they also offered a New York strip, New Zealand rack of lamb, swordfish picatta, and a rock fish filet. My steak was huge and very tasty....I wanted to gnaw on the bone! With dinner, we had a 2001 Sterling Diamond Mountain Ranch Cabernet that was a very good choice for the steaks, and the bar manager also brought around tastes of a 1997 Beringer Cabernet. For dessert, I had the upside down apple pie with cinnamon ice cream, and there was also a choice of a chocolate bomb, and the wine was an Inniskillin Eiswein.

In between the entree and dessert, we began sampling the special Grand Marnier reserves. First was the Cuvee du Centenaire, which was bottled in honor of the 100th anniversary of the House of Grand Marnier. After dessert, we got the Cuvee du Cent Cinquantenaire, which had been bottled in honor of the 150th anniversary. The 150 came in a gorgeously hand painted bottle, but I really think I liked the 100 better....it had better balance and harmony, and the dried bitter orange peel taste was much crisper and more enjoyable. Not that the 150 was bad, mind you!

So, that was dinner. Now I just have to figure out what to do with these three expensive cigars! Two of them are in cute little tubes, too.