Sunday, November 30, 2008

Saturday Night - Off to a foreign country for the night – Part 1

As a break from our usual Saturday night and to give Mick a well deserved rest from cooking, Mick, Amy, Kathy and I headed over the border to Seneca NY for a night. We got a room at the Crown Plaza across the street from Casino Seneca. We had dinner reservations at the Western Door restaurant that was located at Casino Seneca for 6:30pm.

Thankfully the weather was decent and with US dollar so high against the Canadian peso… err I mean dollar, the border was quiet so we arrived at the hotel at around 5:00pm. We all checked in and each couple went their separate ways to unpack, get changed and settle in before heading over to the Western Door for dinner. Kathy was unpacking and did an “uh oh” and explained that she forgot to pack my outfit for dinner. We called across and ask if jeans were OK and were told they were fine but no short sleeves were allowed.

We headed across to dinner and I was relieved to find that there were at least two or three other people in the restaurant in jeans. Nice thing about an upscale restaurant connected to a Casino is that they don’t tend to be as picky about dress code as a normal upscale restaurant. We were seated and soon met our serving team of Hal and Justin. Hal was awesome, very funny and great timing on food and drinks.

We decide to start with a bunch of appetizers – I had the lobster bisque, Kathy had the clams casino as did Amy and Mick went with crab cakes. We also order a “shrimp tree” to split among the table. For the wine, I picked a 2001 Prosper Maufoux, Mont de Milieu, Chablis from Burgundy to go with the appetizers.

The lighting at the Western Door is more geared to atmosphere than for examining wines and table lighting wasn’t good, the colour looked to be the normal yellowish gold that you’d expect from a Chardonnay. The aroma had a nice toasty vanilla aroma with a good mix of citrus. The Chablis was a bit of an odd duck, it was a bit more fruit forward for a French Chardonnay and the acidity was rounded but a touch blunt. The saving grace of the Chablis was that it had a very lemony finish to it which helped its pairing with all the seafood appetizers.

It was a good match for the crab cakes and the clams casino, an ok match with the shrimp tree but was a little funky with the lobster bisque. On a side note, second best crab cakes I have ever had; the actual crab cakes themselves were really good but the sauce served with it was too bland.

The Prosper Maufoux, Mont de Milieu, Chablis was listed at $62 US on the wine list and judging by the mark-up on other wines in that price point, I would guess it would retail in a store in the US for about $25. At $25 US that would be about a $35 wine in the LCBO and at that price point there are much better Chardonnays out there.

Here is the group rating for the wine -Mick - 87, Mark - 87, Kathy – 87, Amy - 86, Overall – 86.75

I couldn’t find this listed on the LCBO’s website or on the Wine Spectator’s website.

Click here for Part 2

No comments: