DH brought me to Harvest Vine for our wedding anniversary.
We ate there before only on special occasions as it was fairly expensive.
Food was always fantastic and we never had a disappointment.
Harvest Vine was a Basque restaurant.
Basque country was on my list of countries to visit; we made it to Spain but did not go to Basque.
Short of going to Basque country to eat, Basque restaurant in Seattle will suffice for now.
We had a lovely anchovies with olive that night.
The anchovies were big, fatty, tender and delicious.
Generally I prefer the green olive, but the black olive paste at the bottom was equally tasty; paired with the super spicy pickled peppers and hard boil egg, we dip the last bit of sauce with our bread.
The anchovies were followed by beet salad, super thinly sliced, and dressed simply with olive oil, salt, pepper and chive – fresh and sweet!
The warm spinach side was interesting.
It was poached with figs and sherry.
It was less alcoholy then I thought.
I never had figs and cooked spinach combination, and they worked remarkably well together!
For bigger plates, we had the stuffed pepper with salt cod.
The cod paste was smooth, creamy, stuffed in a piquillos peppers with Basque famous viscaina sauce (tomatoes and pepperes were the sauce’s main ingredients).
This particular viscaina sauce seemed to have a high smoked component in it; I wonder if the peppers were roasted first?
Next up was the squid braised in squid ink.
The body of the squid was stuffed with the rest of the squid’s edible parts and braised.
Every bite was exploding flavors of fresh squid.
The rice provided served as an excellent vehicle to mop up all the squid ink and it was oh-so-good!
We finished our meal with Foie gras with arrop and apple sauce.
Arrop was a Spanish concentrated grape juice.
Foie gras had crispy skin and tasted superb with the sweetness of the arrop and tartness from the apple sauce.
It was excellent all around.
Throughout the meal, I had a delicious 2008 Garnacha (or Grenache) to accompany the delicious food.
We ended our meal with a flourless chocolate cake.
While the chocolate ganache was fantastic and the flavor of the cake was excellent, the texture was surprisingly dry.
Nonetheless, it still went really well with my last drop of Garnacha!
