I’m going to blog more about Geoff and my Italy trip, but I wanted to mention our 10th anniversary meal yesterday. You can skip this if, understandably, you’re not interested in food except what’s actually on your own plate.
We usually go the Le Volte, the restaurant that replaced Portofino, (which became Nemo's) where we had our rehearsal dinner. But we decided instead to go to Fire, one of Cleveland’s most famous restaurants, and now my candidate for the best restaurant in North East Ohio. This was my first time to Fire.
The restaurant itself has a great ambiance: busy but not so noisy you can’t have a conversation. The legended fire burns behind the stainless steel divider where the staff prepares the meals. Our waiter was efficient and friendly, informative without being pushy. We ordered two red wines -- they brought the bottles, and when Geoff saw the bottle he realized he had been unclear on his order, instead wanting the North Coast one because we always like to try local wines. The waiter whisked the unwanted one away and brought back an excellent red blend, Kinkead Ridge, Ohio river valley . MIne was pinot noir, Angeline, Sonoma County We also had a bottle of Pelligrino, mineral water being a habit we picked up in Italy.
The waiter brought bread and olive oil, which I usually ask them to remove, because I’m damned if I’m going to sacrifice the 18 pounds I’ve lost for something as mundane as bread. But I was quite hungry, having banked calories from the previous two days in order to splurge for Fire, so I indulged in the very airy crisp bread and an olive oil that had a pleasingly bitter tang.
For an appetizer, Geoff ordered a dish he had had before at Fire: fire-roasted banana peppers, house-made chorizo, and tomato ragout. I agonized over several delicious sounding items; Fire uses pomegranate, goat cheese, and olives imaginatively, and I wanted to try several openers, but decided on roasted beets, ricotta salata, blood orange marmalade, frisee and truffle vinaigrette.
For our main course, I looked with pure desire on the several fish entrees, but was inevitably attracted to something a little different: tandoor roasted whole fish, with orzo, olives, creamy leeks, pomegranate relish and toasted pistachios. Geoff decided his opener was rather heavy, so he decided on vegan “fire curry” with quinoa pilaf, smoked eggplant, cauliflower, sautéed spinach and cilantro puree.
The appetizers were splendid: my beet salad contained two kinds of beets: the traditional red, and also a very sweet white beet -- at least I think it was a beet. I love frisee, and there was just the right amount of that, plus a sprinkle of ricotta. Geoff’s banana peppers were a tease: you never know, with banana peppers, just how hot they’ll be. I invoked the wife rule and tasted these: the bite I got was hot enough to wake up my mouth, and the chorizo was luscious,
Our main courses had a lot of eye-appeal, of course; Geoff’s was a tower of delights. He loves eggplant in any form, and I gather this was well prepared. Actually I forgot to ask for a bite of this, because I was so focussed on the splendid trout in front of me.
The waiter had identified it as a type of trout; it was entirely fresh and perfectly done. As soon as I had eaten a few bites, the chef came over and asked how I liked it. I am not sure if this was the famed Douglas Katz, because I’m not good with faces, and it was only after he had left that Geoff told me his badge identified him as the executive chef. I always like it when a chef asks how I like a dish, because it makes me feel as if I’m some sort of an epicure. I asked him where the tandoor was, if it was really that big flame, and if the fish really had come out of it, and he said, oh yes, and see those steaks there, they were also done in the tandoor. Plus, I notice, a lot of other things on the menu were flamed.
And the Tandoor Fish was indeed something special. As I mentioned, the skin was crisp and flavorful, I suspect from some kind of pre-tandoor anointment with -- what? butter? marinade? too subtle to pick out just one flavor. The flesh inside was pink and moist, melt-in-your mouth fish like what I fell in love with as a small child eating fish pulled out of a tiny lake near my parents’ house. I wish I had more vocabulary to describe how lovely this fishy was. You know, you remember great restaurants you've been to -- the Tour d'Argent (back when it was four star), Balans on Lincoln Road, Joe Allen's, Maison Akira, but do you remember individual dishes? This one I will remember.
The orzo was prepared with some cheese, I think, and olives. Orzo means “barley” in Italian (we drank a lot of caffé d’orzo, roasted barley coffee, in Italy), although what this really is is pasta in the shape of barley grains. There was more frisée, beautifully dressed. One of the things l liked about what I had at Fire is that the dressings are balanced: you don’t immediately say, Oh that’s the blood orange marmalade. There is a blend of flavors.
My predation of the fish continued as I ate the top half and sucked on the bones. I removed the backbone and set aside the remaining half, plus most of the orzo, for today’s lunch. Like a serial killer, I like to take home souvenirs.
We had forgotten to decide at the beginning of the meal whether to order pear crisp, which takes 20 minutes to prepare. I think we were afraid dessert would be too much at that point. But I felt like enjoying everything Fire had to offer, so we ordered lime tart. This turned out to be an intense sweet-sour tart with a brulée crust. Four tiny caramelized slices of kumquat adorned the plate. We could split the tart, because the flavor was very focussed and each bite was like a dessert in itself. We did the Zeno’s paradox splitting thing with the last crumb (see Ellen Klages’ story “Mrs. Zeno’s Paradox.”), though Geoff had forgotten his pocket scanning electron microscope.
We had espresso, and the waiter brought two little chocolate chip cookies. Geoff doesn’t eat chocolate, so he dissected the cookie into chocolate and non-chocolate bites: the chocolate ones were still a bit runny from the oven. At his invitation, I licked his fingers clean of any remaining chocolate. If anybody was watching, they did not snicker loudly enough for us to hear.
Then we took a walk around Shaker Square.
That was our anniversary. I hope we have many more, just as indulgent.
And be advised, Fire is a world-class restaurant. I don’t know how we’re lucky enough to live less than an hour's drive from it. The menu is a catalog of high art.
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optimistic
