Text 23038, 110 rader
Skriven 2012-03-29 12:14:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: tr 439
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A few uneventful days catered with lots of beer, beef, and
chocolate, and then it was back to the salt mines. This is the
one chroniclable meal of the stay:

Le Jeune Chef, the training facility of the culinary arts
program of the local branch of Penn State, is one of the
dining destinations of town. You go in to a facility that
looks like a baby-boom-built high school, and once stepping
across the threshold, you get the full faux French restaurant
experience: overearnest young waiters, a sommelier who didn't
know what was on offer, and a dropped glass or two, all
accompanied by tinkle pianist.

We'd tried to get reservations for French night, but it was
sold out, so we settled for the next occasion, New Orleans
night, which had much less of a following. We met up with
some of Annie's old friends, some of whom had had pull enough
to have gotten a table for the previous night and who were
sort of bowed back into the restaurant. It doesn't hurt when
one's name is on the local stadium, the local auditorium, and
various other civic and commercial structures. We got seated at
the most prominent table, a roundie for 8 to 10 that you can't
miss when you come in the front door. Unfortunately, Billy
was feeling under the weather and chose to punt the evening,
and one of the other guests had a meeting that he'd forgotten
about and so didn't show, and we were down to 7.

The starters were rabbit strudel with housemade barbecue sauce
or duck ham. Annie kicked up a fuss about having to choose
between two cute animals to eat but eventually went for Donald
the quack rather than Peter Cottontail: it was of a perfectly
good standard. The strudel was not overcrisp, and the dish was
sort of like a chicken pot pie though not so substantial. The
bbq sauce was more tomatoey than out of a bottle. Fortunately,
it was mostly on the side.

Following at a decent interval was the soup course, gumbo, or
cream of chicken soup for the really unadventurous. The gumbo
consisted of one each oyster, shrimp, slice of andouille,
shred of chicken, and okra slice in a pretty flavorful but
slightly too salty and slightly too sweet fish and tomato broth.

A salad course: jambalaya salad - crawfish (firm, fairly sweet,
possibly USA) and sausage rice bound with a little mayo, served
at room temp, not a tour de force but rather more of a stomach
filler; or seafood Caesar, of which I saw none.

Mains:

Quail with crab stuffing - a split bird (1) done medium well
but with no crisping on the outside; the stuffing was bready,
peppery, salty, with shreds of what might have been crab but
not tasting bad, and in fact rather crabby as if hydrated
with crab broth.

Chicken cordon bleu with Cajun seasoning - there were a couple
of these over the other side of the table.

Crawfish etouffee with dirty rice seemed to meet the approval
of the ones of us who had it. I wasn't within stealing distance
of any, as it was a big table and we were spread out.

There was a fourth choice which none of us had.

The vegetable of the day for everyone was collards cooked with
pork, pretty decent.

They offer wines by the glass in sets of one, two, or
three. I got a two-glass flight. On the menu display these
are described by varietal only, no origin, vintage, or other
information, so a bit of a leap of faith. I ordered what
was characterized on the menu as Chenin/Viognier. Who knows
what it really was, so I called the guy over. He had no idea
what I was talking about and denied they offered a
Chenin/Viognier until I explained it in words of one syllable
with the visual aid of the menu. It was off anyway, and I
ended up with an alternative selection that tasted like
perfumed water. Most of the others at table were smart and
had various bottled beers. Pinot Noir was your usual slightly
underconcentrated California participle noun stuff, going
quite nicely with the quail. The pours were very short, which
was not such a big deal given the quality of the wines, the
best that the Pennsylvania state liquor store has to offer
for less than ten bucks a bottle.

The creme caramel was off, which made life easy for me, as
it is both the most dairyful and poisonous and also my
favorite of the offered desserts.

Instead I had (a rather lackluster) chocolate soup with
(good-tasting but slightly rubbery) coffee flan and fresh
fruit; the fruit were strawberries and a blueberry or two.

The other desserts were blueberry ice cream with lemon
custard sauce and cherry cobbler with vanilla ice cream,
both pronounced good, though the latter ice cream came as
strawberry, which strikes me as not going well, but nobody
complained.

The bill was modest by French restaurant standards but
quite elevated by local ones.

Funny thing - you go to the back right of the room past
the bar for the restrooms, and at the very back is a door
that is propped open; behind it is the real world and what
looks like a high-school gym.

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