For my birthday last week, Brette arranged a dinner date with Anne and Pat at one of our favorite restaurants, The Corner Table. The four of us had dined there together for our anniversary one year and loved it (read our review here) and on another occasion, I had the opportunity to cook in their kitchen. Since then, their management and chef have changed, but their amazing food and experience has not. For my birthday celebration, we reserved the Kitchen Table. The table is, yes you guessed it, in the kitchen. When you sit there, the chef brings you courses until they say stop. No, I’m not kidding. Each course is also paired with a wine or beer. Not kidding about that either. On their website, they strongly suggest taking a cab. We’ve always talked about signing up for this experience and my birthday seemed like a suitable occasion. Great idea Brette!
Here were the rules (not really rules – more things to know) they gave us. This evening was similar to competing in a sport!
1. All players at the table had to go along with each course. For example, Anne couldn’t decide she was done while the rest of us moved on. It was all in or nothing.
2. We needed to give a 2-course warning when we were getting full. They had 2 savory courses they wanted to make sure we tried and after those would be a cheese course and three desserts. Yeah, so once you cried uncle, you had 6 courses to go.
3. At any point, we were welcome to step into the action and watch the chef(s) in action.
So, first let me introduce the players. Note – these photos were taken many courses in. We are drunk on food.
Thankfully Chenny (owner and wine pairing extraordinaire) wrote each course and pairing as we went. My brain was full of food by the end of the night, I had no room for memory.
I would say this will go down as one of my all time favorite dining experiences. The food was absolutely stellar. Chef Thomas spent a lot of time talking with us about the food, the restaurant, and the random farmers/foragers/growers who show up with food they’ve cultivated (while we were there a guy from Forest Lake showed up with a giant mushroom shelf!). He gave us a tour of their cooler where they had various cuts of pork in different processing stages (they butcher a hog every 2 weeks and make all of their own charcuterie).
Anne was awesome and snapped great photos throughout the evening – including all 18 courses. I’m proud that we made it to 18. It was no small task. The record under Chef Tomas is 23. I know that we would not have been able to get through 5 more courses. My hat goes off to the record holders. That is so much food! As you will notice, some dishes were sampled before being photographed. When food is this good, it’s really hard to wait. I will let the photos do the talking for the food, but I will point out our favorite dishes along the way.
The picture above is headcheese. Or as I know prefer to call it, Fromage de tet, the french translation. That sounds way fancier and much less scary. Believe it or not, this was one of the best dishes of the night. It was served with the best brioche bread I’ve ever had (Likely because Chef Thomas doubles the butter). He encouraged us to create a sandwich with the brioche, mustard, pickled mustard seed and the fromage de tet. It was one of the best bites of the evening. It was like a super fancy ham sandwich. We all agreed that it was awesome.
Ahh..gnochhi. The gnocchi on its own was amazing. With it was sautéed mushrooms and what we now call ‘face bacon’. Crispy chunks of bacon made from the cheeks of the pig. There was all sorts of goodness going on in this dish.
Above is pork belly and the Corner Table is known for how well they do this dish. With reason. It’s delicious. We all devoured ours. It’s served over pickled cabbage called chow-chow. This is one you should definitely order off the menu.
This brisket over cheese grits was extremely tasty. Had it not been course 14, I likely would have enjoyed it more. It was fork tender and super flavorful.
The smore was my favorite dessert. It was also the last course so maybe I was also a bit relieved?
I can not emphasize enough how fun this evening was. We were there for nearly 6 hours. 6 hours of awesome food, libations, lots of laughs and superb company. I am one very lucky 35-year-old.
