Sauce and Bread Kitchen - Foraged Feast 2018

I like Sauce and Bread Kitchen, the Bakery/Hot Sauce factory/Cafe that does pizza on Fridays and the occasional dinner that you have to be on their mailing list to attend.  I am on their mailing list and have attended several of their dinners, but it has been a while, so I was happy to see their announcement for their Foraged Feast, a dinner where many of the ingredients used in the various dishes were foraged.  Looking at the menu beforehand, things looked very good, so I was pretty excited.  Dishes are served family style, though Sauce and Bread Kitchen is a BYOB, so anything that you want to drink, other than water and coffee at the end of the meal, you have to bring yourself.  Whether you want to share that is up to you.  I brought enough beer that I thought interesting that I was able to share some.  I brought an Ommegang Fire and Blood Red Ale with Ancho Chilies and Jaden James Monkey Butter Porter.  The Red Ale was good with a nice head and the Ancho Chili bite was very light.  The Peanut Butter Porter was weird, but I expected it to be weird.  It had a strong peanut aroma and finished with flavors of chocolate and coffee like many dark bears.  It was like eating a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup for breakfast.

We actually started with an Amuse Bouche, 3 Sisters Crostini with Hominy, Winter Squash, and Chickpea Miso, and Radish, crisped on Pickle Bread, with Ramp Giardinera.  As with all amuse bouches, it was a little bite of wonderfulness.  I tried the crostini with and without the giardinera and it was good either way, though better with the giardinera.

Our first actual course was a Hawks Wing Bao with Smoked Dryad Saddle Mushrooms, Sweet Onion in Peanut Miso BBQ Sauce, Shaved Asparagus/Birds Eye Pepper Salad, Wild Chive, and Chili Peanuts.  It was fresh, spicy, crisp, and crunchy, and was a lot easier to eat than I expected.  I would have expected that trying to hold it together while trying to eat it, might have squeezed many of the vegetables out.  This did happen to a small extent, but for the most part, it stayed in the bun.

After our first course of mushrooms, we continued with another course of mushrooms.  We were served Wild Mushroom Pasta with Chilled Buckwheat Noodles, Ramp Olive Oil, Poached Morels, Sauteed Morels and Golden Oyster Mushrooms, and Fried Pepitas.  This was really good.  It was tender, nutty, and the ramp olive oil acted as a nice vinaigrette.  It reminded me of a vegetarian dish that I make every summer.

Our entree was our only dish that actually had meat and that was fine because everything else had been great, thus far.  We had a Choucroute.  Choucroute is the Alsatian version of Sauerkraut (and sausage).  This used a Venison Andouille Sausage.  While venison eaten at home is generally wild, venison found in a restaurant is generally farmed.  For the Choucroute itself, that was pretty wild, using Grilled Escarole and Ramp and Carrot Kimchi (the Korean version of Sauerkraut).  It was tart and flavorful with a little spice, though admittedly, the escarole was a little tough to eat.

For dessert we finished with a Financier Pistachio Vanilla Cake with Rhubarb Sorbet, a Candied Basswood Leaf, and an Edible Flower.  While the ice cream and cake were good, the best part about this was the candied basswood leaf.  It was sweet and very delicate with a lightly crisp texture.  The flower, also very delicate, unsurprisingly tasted like a flower.

This dinner was a lot of fun and I would be happy to see what they come up with next year.