The Daily Bite: The Whale Wins

Family Food Fest 2014 ended with a bang thanks to the deliciousness supplied by "The Whale Wins"

***Spoilers***

According to remodelista.com, Erickson, the creator of "The Whale Wins", was inspired by a painting by American folk artist Mary Maguire depicting a whaling scene. Because of this, "The Whale Wins" can be seen as an homage to the ending of Moby Dick by Herman Melville. The whale does indeed win. It is actually quite a coincidence that I am currently working my way through Moby Dick. But that is a post for another day.

To kick off our fabulous meal, we started with Sea Wolf & Columbia City Bakery bread & butter. I usually try to avoid salt and butter, but let's be real, the salted butter and bread was simply amazing. For entrées, We ordered the Hama Hama roasted clams with polenta, greens, tomato broth, and shallots; the Smashed avocado toast with green garlic spiced butter, mizuna, and cilantro; and the special for the day, a pork sausage with artichoke hearts, carrots and baby lima beans. The sausage was delicious and the clams were delectable, (as was the sauce they were swimming in....in fact I very un-daintily used some remaining bread to soak up the sauce. Charming I know, but it was too good to waste!) Even with how good the clams were, My favorite would have to be the smashed avocado toast, which tasted piquant. I am still convinced it had a flavor in it similar to coconut korma, but my husband did not agree. I reminded him I am somewhat of a coconut korma connoisseur, as it is the dish I almost always get when ordering Indian food. He of course had to concede. 

Finally for our last entrée, we had scapes with salbixada sauce & clabrian chilies. They looked like food from a Dr. Seuss book! Scapes are actually the tops of garlic plants, which I had never had before. They were roasted to perfection and reminded me, flavor wise, of roasted pumpkin seeds. If I ever grow my own garlic, I am definitely going to use the tops! 


For dessert we each sampled a bit of Shirlee's brownie with crème anglaise; some yougurt pistachio cake with poached apriums; and some butter roasted zucchini bread with crème fraiche. They were all divine, but I would defiantly order the roasted zucchini bread again. Although, I would suggest taking it with a grain of salt. Seriously, they sprinkled some sea salt over the top and it highlighted the sweet flavors beautifully.

The Daily Bite: Revel Revisited

As part of Family Food Fest 2014 we returned to Revel. Ah Revel, still just as tasty as ever.

We ordered from the Summer Grill Shack Menu and got the "Enough to go around", which was delectable!

We also ordered the green papaya salad with summer greens, medjool dates and green curry vin. I had never tried green papaya, but it was rather tasty. It worked really well in the salad. We got shrimp & chinese sausage dumplings with asian mustard greens and lemon grass beef with cilantro noodles, yu choy and cripsy onions. My husband's favorite were the dumplings, but the lemon grass beef was also exceptionally appetizing. Even though we ordered it last time we were there, we got an old classic, the pork belly pancake with kimchi and bean sprouts. It was possibly more delicious then I remember.

For dessert we ordered the Pelé "The Black Pearl", Which came with Banana Semifreddo, passion fruit curd, coconut streusel, and chocolate pearls. It was really good, but my favorite was the other dessert dish.

The Beckham "Golden Balls",which had sticky toffee pudding, poached apple, chinese dates, and crème fraiche whip was especially scrumptious. I'm a sucker for toffee though.