Green Zebra-Amazing!

As a decadent birthday treat, we went to Spring and Green Zebra on consecutive nights. Spring was a very good, not great, restaurant. Green Zebra, however, was the best meal I've had in quite some time, probably since last year's epic meal at Trio.

As with any very creative enterprise, there may be some hits and misses on the menu, but in this one visit, they hit everything out of the park (too many baseball games going on).

Amuse: Four tidbits, garam marsala flavored popcorn, spiced peanuts, edamame and pickled wax means. Woke the taste buds up, although nothing extraordinary.

Beets with marscapone: At first, you just taste some excellent thin slices of red and yellow beats. Then, you add the whipped marscapone, then the aged balsamic, and then the beet greens. Each extra item brought out more in the beets. This is a subtle but extraordinary approach to beets.

Carrots: On one side of the plate, roasted baby carrots with balsamic, olive oil and sea salt. By itself, a great dish. On the other side, a small carrot cake (savory), topped with a truffle slice. Absolutely, positively, sublime. Who knew carrot and truffle were made for each other. The best vegetable dish I can recall having.

Wild rice and barley cake: A hockey puck with the aforementioned grains with kale on top. What brought the dish to the highest level was the huckleberry sauce. The sweetness of that with the chewy grains; heaven.

I skipped dessert in favor of a late harvest geverstrameiner (can't spell that, for sure!). My wife liked her dishes as much as I did, I think: avocado panne cotta, roasted matsutake mushrooms and corn mezza luna.

In addition, its quite reasonably priced. For three dishes (quite a lot of food, for me), two glasses of wine (one each), one dessert and one dessert wine, about $135, including tax and a generous tip. My only quibble is the dishes came too quickly, as we ate all this in about one hour and fifteen minutes.

To me, the greatest achievement for a chef is to take one very common ingredient, and bring out deeper aspects of the taste of that ingredient than you've ever had before. All three dishes did that for me. Do you get the sense I liked my meal?

I've heard many favorable reviews about Mcclain's Green Zebra. I, in fact, will be dining there tonight in celebration of an anniversary. I'll report back with my findings soon afterwards. Here's to a good weekend. Cheers.