Roll Restaurants
Global Palate Restaurant | West Park
by M.R. Smith
The menu arrives, with a wide variety of specials: a cornucopia of globe-trotting culinary disciplines, all presented with all-natural hormone-free meats from local farms, as well as locally-grown produce, primarily from RSK Farms, Stone Ridge Orchards, and Davenport’s Farm. Global recipes, locally produced.
And we’re off to a great start. The Sicilian gets the house salad: baby spinach with grilled pears, Cabrales blue cheese, and shaved red onion, with hazelnut vinaigrette. The Professor, sticking to the classics, counters with the house Caesar, with white anchovies, and I succumb to the Shrimp and Pear Potstickers w/ tamari-ginger dipping sauce.
The crunching and dare-I-say ecstatic moaning from the Sicilian confirms salad Nirvana: a great flavor and texture combo, the hazelnut an inspired choice. The Caesar got a nice boost from the requested extra anchovies: not those bony, skinny things you get on a bad pizza, but nice tangy/salty fishes. And my pot-stickers took some chopstick dexterity due to their generous size, but the shrimp/pear combo worked nicely (what the heck do folks usually put in these pot-stickers anyway? I’m never sure), and the dumpling casings held up well. It’s hard to say how good they were, they didn’t last long.
Still, no problem making room for the entrees. The Professor was apparently feeling the need for comfort food, so he opted for the Shepherd’s Pie (from the specials menu), with ground lamb, carrots and onions, with a perfectly browned mashed potato topping. Though this dish sounds simple, it still has a subtle and satisfying blend of warm spices, and a big ol’ bite of it just feels right somehow...
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