Scylla- Still Amazing

Husband and I celebrated our wedding anniversary last night, though we both had early-evening work/school obligations and so had a rather late dinner (9 PM) at Scylla, which, though right around the block from us, our schedules and finances don't allow us to frequent more than a few times per year.

All I have to say is, wowwee wow wow. Chef Stephanie Izard continues to amaze me with her knack for interesting flavor combination, and the service, as always, is truly, truly stellar. The servers at Scylla are far and above the usual waitrons--these are people who truly know their food, wine, and know how to be attentive without being intrusive.

Dining at 9 PM on a Tuesday at Scylla is also a pleasurable experience in that, as that famously swan-wearing Icelandic songstress once crooned*-- it's oh so quiet. This is perhaps, I feel the only flaw in Scylla. Housed in a classic Bucktown bungalow-style dwelling, the place can get really earsplittingly loud at peak times on the weekend.

Onto the good stuff:

Started our imbibing with a pomegranate martini por moi, and a Two Brothers Ale for hubby. Man, its great that this place is within stumbling distance as it allows us to pair each course with a cocktail/wine. My martini, though admittedly, NOT a true martini but a cocktail served in a martini glass, was great. Tart, sweet, boozy. Hubby's beer was top notch and served, he said, in the proper style of glass.

Foodwise: He had the foie brulee appetizer, I had the mixed greens salad with proscuitto, fresh mozz, grilled asparagus, and pickled rhubarb with a basil lime dressing. The foie was, as suspected, rediculous in its sensual creaminess, which was offset nicely by a small salad of arugula and strawberries.
My salad was a remarkable combination of tastes and textures, the mozz being some of the freshest and creamiest I've had the pleasure of eating lately. This is where Chef Izard shines: in combining textures and flavors so that no stone is left unturned. Each dish balances sweet, salty, sour, crispy, creamy, meaty textures with a deft hand, and no ingredient feels out of place-- even if the menu description seems odd or cumbersome. Its hard to believe that dishes with SO many ingredients can seem so simple, but they do.

Moving on, I had the Hawaain Hebi, a remarkably meaty yet mild fish, served with polenta, grilled calamari, cerignola olives, pistachios and grilled treviso. This dish was paired expertly by our server Alexis (also the wine director) with a french red blend La Bastide. A remarkable wine that opens and changes by the minute, allowing my husband and I to play one of our favorite games "what do YOU smell in this glass"? Fruit forward yields to notes of wet grass and earth for me, and wood and leather tones detected by the hubby. A wonderful offset to the fish which was, like the wine, both rich (polenta, fish) and bright (olives, treviso) at the same time.

Husband's dish was the Trout, served with a variety of "accessories" including new potatoes, blueberries, almonds and I'm sure other things, but I wouldn't know since they were all long gone before I got more than nary a new potato.

Seafood is Izard's strong suit, each fish was cooked perfectly to medium, a feat other more lauded establishments often have trouble accomplishing.


Though we were stuffed, we couldn't resist the dessert offerings.
My husband had the cashew financier, served with brown butter ice cream, caramel popcorn and a sprinkling of parmesan cheese around the plate meant to evoke the Garrett's butter/cheese/caramel combo. All I can say is, I have never been one to wait in line for more than 5 minutes for Garrett's, but I would gladly wait in line for this. Paired with a desert wine, Badia a Coltibuono, light with butterscotch notes, again, a perfect pairing

I, being predictable, was drawn to the chocolate-y offering, and order the dark chocolate trio.

This dish is intended to be eaten from left to right, with the intensity and richness escalating. Far left was a smooth chocolate pannacotta with a caramelized fresh fig. Middle, a DARK chocolate ganache over goat cheese filled raspberries. This made me remark to my husband that I wanted to move to the country and raise goats. From a woman who's idea of roughing it is staying at a Holiday Inn, this declaration shows the power and perfection of this combination.
Last, but not least, Dark, dark, dark chocolate ganache/mousse of some sort paired with passionfruit sauce. Whoa Nelly. Not for the faint of chocolate! My dessert was paired with a sparkling Muscatel with great notes of honeysuckle which cut through the richness of all that cocoa.


When we were done doing our damage, we came in around $160 before giving our gracious server a hefty tip. Now, I know this ain't cheap, but for what was easily the best, most balanced meal I've eaten out in the past 6 months, possibly the year, and considering that $67 of that was alcohol and two bottles of Pellegrino that my husband has become hopelessly addicted to, I consider Scylla excellent in terms of matching price point to value. Were one not celebrating a special occasion, you could easily get out of there at about $40 to $50 dollars per person for three generous courses and one generously poured glass of wine.


I urge all of you to visit this summer and enjoy Izard's offerings-- and then marvel at the fact that she is not yet 30 years old. I always do!












*Please, someone get this reference.

bananasandwiches wrote:*Please, someone get this reference.

got it

our vday dinner back in Feb was also tremendous... you can say what you want about "special occassion" mass-produced prix-fixe meals but... immediately beneath our meal @ Everest, this one was right up there for us... never written it up, but i still kept the menu.. somewhere. what i love the most, is the complete immersion of the menu under the seafood focus. i wish more chefs would give up the inevitable trek towards red meat (custom house), small plate (wakamono - Japa? PLEASE!), japanese fusion (insert any of dozens here).

i ride by during weekdays and the room is just completely dead... while Schwa a few blocks away is booked for a month...

You had me at "foie brulee."

I am going to chalk this up on my list of places to visit SOON before I can't have things like that anymore...

i ride by during weekdays and the room is just completely dead... while Schwa a few blocks away is booked for a month...

Whether or not Scylla deserves better, there's nothing undeserved about that for Schwa.

Mike G wrote:Whether or not Scylla deserves better, there's nothing undeserved about that for Schwa.

I took the comment to mean how fickle the flavor of the month mentality can be. There once was a time, not very long ago, you couldn't get into Scylla. The poster says the food is as good as it ever was. Right now you can't get into Schwa. At some point, maybe not very long from now, Schwa will be dead on a weekday night--though the food be as good as it ever was.

Hmm, maybe, but when I got into Scylla it was because you couldn't get into Le Bouchon...

Mike G wrote:Hmm, maybe, but when I got into Scylla it was because you couldn't get into Le Bouchon...

Le Bouchon is still pretty crowded. Even on weeknights.

Christopher Gordon wrote in another thread, regarding an unsatisfactory experience at Spring:

This was an unfortunately middling meal chosen by a visiting friend who wanted to try a Shawn McClain restaurant(we steered him away from Green Zebra and Custom House). To spotlight matters, he enjoyed a supposedly stellar meal at Scylla the next night.

We went to Scylla Saturday night and the food and service were both exemplary, confirming your friend's report. When I inquired of the waitress whether there were any walnuts in the special appetizer (since this is the one food to which I'm allergic), she took a very proactive role not only in confirming with the chef that there were none, but that there none in any other dish on the menu, save for one dessert which she alerted me to. She then brought my attention to the presence of other kinds of nuts in a couple of the other dishes, just in case. This beyond-the-call-of-duty attention could have seemed like she was making an embarrassingly big deal over nothing (in that I didn't mean to make it into a "cause celebre," I just needed to make sure the special didn't have walnuts). It didn't come across that way. It came across that she was genuinely concerned, and so was the kitchen, and they wanted to do everything possible to ensure a pleasant experience for us. I felt cared for.

The special appetizer (a trio on the plate of mushroom ravioli, a mushroom salad, and pear butter) was the mushroomiest! Spectacular flavor. My halibut was delicious. Everything our party of 3 ordered met or exceeded our expectations. Scylla, I guess, is a place that has lost its "flavor of the month" status (they were doing quite well Saturday, but we were able to get a reservation, albeit an early [6:30] one, on fairly short notice, which I don't think would have been the case some time ago), but it deserves not to be ignored.