Restaurant Review

Okay, here's my first, feeble attempt at a restaurant review. I took the wife to Guthrie's last night because Guthrie's was one of the restaurants that had extended Restaurant Week for an additional week. Guthrie's is in the former Rooster location between Uptown and West Village. It was splendid.

Unlike Nana, Guthrie's only had one set menu for restaurant week, with an appetizer, salad, main course, and dessert. They also offered matching wine flights with the menu and we went with those instead of picking a bottle off their wine list. The appetizer was delicious and I had to keep the wife from picking her plate off the table and licking it. It consisted of a tomato basil bread base, with pan seared scallops and Jerusalem artichokes. Now, I've never had a Jerusalem artichoke or even knew that there were different kinds of artichokes, but these were delicious. The scallops were delectable and the whole dish came with a saffron sauce and some basil pesto. This was paired with a fume blanc that matched up well.

The salad course was pretty typical, with some sort of greens topped with julienned granny smith apples, papaya, and cantaloupe. The mustard dressing was good, and the dish was paired with a non-Napa chardonnay (the location escapes me at this point). The salad was fine and hand a distinct taste, but the wine was too much of a similar match instead of something complimentary.

The main course was seared sea bass with pearl couscous and a corn/black olive salsa. The sea bass was incredible. The couscous had grape tomatoes in it and was excellent as well. I'm not a big black olive eater, but even the salsa tasted good with the fish and the couscous. The dish was paired with a pinot noir that was a perfect match. As a matter of fact, the pinot was so good that if I could remember the name, I'd figure out where to buy some.

Dessert was a sampling of a number of their offerings, including a chocolate cake, a "mary elizabeth?" (I'm not sure of the name, but it was cheesecake like with a raspberry topping). There was also some sort of fruit pastry and a couple of chocolate truffles. The course was accompanied by a small flute of champagne. All told, this was way more dessert than we needed, but it was all good.

In summary, our experience was excellent. The food was delicious, the portions of good size, and the wine pours larger than usual. The service was not formal, but very friendly and the only critique I have that they were occasionally late getting the matching wine poured with each course. The most interesting part of the evening was that each table has a hand-painted chair that was done by a group of local artists at some time in the past. Ours, was painted to look like a toilet, with the lid up so that is looked like you were sitting on the "throne" the entire meal. We laughed about it all evening.