An Italian Tasting Menu

Why I thought it would be gross: Three words: lack of control. When you select a tasting menu, you give yourself up to a set of dishes selected by the chef, which may or may not be what you would’ve selected from a menu yourself. While the contents of the menu are generally disclosed before you order it, there is always a dish or two that causes me to enter into this endeavor with trepidation (Salmon? Ugh.) I like to joke that I want a safety word when I order a tasting menu – yelling “chicken finger!” as a sign to get me out of here and bring me something normal.


Ingredients: Could be all sorts of different things, but generally the dishes flow from one to another. In this case, I’ll be discussing a tasting menu I had at a fabulous nontraditional Italian restaurant in Boston. A quick note, nothing at this restaurant has ever failed me and I deeply trust the Chef to make things I would never eat absolutely delicious. Dishes on this menu included a duck egg soufflé with a poached duck egg in the center and white truffle slices on top (extremely expensive, rare mushroom they use pigs in Italy to find), smoked salmon on endive (a kind of lettuce) with a citrus sauce, scallops on the half shell (like the actual shell the scallops make a living opening and closing), gnocchi (in this case a half-moon shaped pasta pocket) stuffed with dried cherries and chocolate and atop a pork blood reduction sauce that ended up tasting like chocolate, two wild boar (pork) chops, and for dessert a pine nut panna cotta (an Italian cooked cream). I also ordered a homemade cola, which was a blend of coffee, caramel, sassafras, and other cola flavors.

Character: Taking these one at a time… The duck egg soufflé is the consistency of whipped cream (lacking any better comparison) and is warmed with a slightly cooked egg in the middle. It tastes very much like a normal chicken egg to me. The truffles are very delicate and have a very earthy flavor – these are like $40 for a shaving of a mushroom (like a penny size), so enjoy! The smoked salmon tasted to me like smoked salmon (which I’m still not convinced I’ll ever like) – roughly the consistency of soft ham; the citrus sauce on this helped to give it some pep. The scallops are the consistency of a moist chicken breast and had a bit of a briny/salty flavor from in the shell they live in, as well as a bit of a smoky flavor they picked up from the preparation. The gnocchi is a pillow soft pocket of pasta, similar to a ravioli but the pasta itself is a bit fluffier and doughier, and the stuffing was very rich – like a cherry cordial. The sauce for the gnocchi, despite it having no chocolate in it, tastes like chocolate with a bit of rich saltiness from the pork blood (complementing the pasta well) and has the consistency of a chocolate syrup. The wild boar pork chops are a blend between a lamp chop and a pork chop in both consistency and flavor. And the panna cotta is the consistency of a very squishy cheesecake or a custard and tastes heavily of cream, and had pine nut flavors within it. By the way, each of these dishes came with a unique wine pairing that was really fun to try in conjunction with the food. Of everything, I absolutely adored a white Nebiolo wine that I would never have thought existed. Lest I digress into a wine post, it was amazing! I came home and Googled where to get that… and of course, it’s practically impossible. Still fun to try!

What I thought: So, I had a million reasons to think the majority of this menu would be gross – duck eggs, pork blood, scallops in a shell, really? But, surprisingly, and thanks to the Chef, the majority of this menu was not only not gross, but actually enjoyable. I enjoyed trying the homemade soda, which was pretty different from a normal coke – it had much more coffee flavor and the richness from the sassafras. I don’t think I’ll ever be a huge fan of soufflés, but I can appreciate what went into this one. Something about the texture and the flavor throws me off. Similarly, panna cotta and I don’t really get along – again it’s a texture and flavor issue. But, I really enjoyed the scallops. They were so flavorful and had a chewy texture, but not so chewy that I couldn’t savor them and enjoy. I also enjoyed the wild boar chops. I like lamb chops anyway (similar in a few ways) and these had a good smoky and salty flavor and strong meaty texture – really good. And the gnocchi, which I normally don’t really care for, was delicious. Luckily I forgot about the ingredients for the sauce long enough to finish half the dish before I was reminded I was eating a pork blood reduction… I kinda wanted to die right then, but thought better of it because I’d actually eaten and enjoyed half of it unknowingly and it hit me that maybe that was okay. The texture of the sauce was like a runny chocolate sauce, and the flavor was really complex but included chocolate overtures and hints of deep red wine and saltiness – all of the flavors blended really well to be multi-dimensional and give even more depth and a bit of zing to the flavors in the pasta. Eating this dish was kind of a breakthrough. I would’ve been sure blood would be in my top 5 of must be gross foods, but I stand corrected. Just goes to show that sometimes going out on a limb can offer great payoffs.

Overall, I’m happy I could put my trust in a very capable chef that I knew sought to delight me with his menu. I don’t do this all the time, but it’s a great example of trying scary things in the best possible places (one of my tips/rules to live by). I had a great time and expanded my horizons, too.

Tip: Try Scary Things at the Best Places You Can Get Them

I find that I’ve tried a lot of new things at nicer/fine dining restaurants (usually stealing off of the plate of someone else at the table). There’s no reason you should write something off just because you experienced a poor preparation or a rotten product. Guacamole at Taco Bell is very different from hand-crushed guacamole prepared tableside at Carnivale in Chicago (oh, I wanted to live in that guacamole!). It’s especially worth it if you can convince someone else to get what you’re curious about and borrow, or if you can try an appetizer version of something.

One source I use for information on this, in addition to personal recommendations, is the site www.TVfoodmaps.com. This site compiles recommendations from the Food Network shows by location, so you can see some of the best places to eat in your area. There’s an App, too, which is great when I’m traveling. I trust professional chefs to give me some good ideas, and it’s great to have these ideas all in one place. Another great idea I heard recently was to call a local ethnic association or embassy to find out their favorite restaurant for their style of food (e.g., call the local Polish American Association to find out where to get the best Polish food in town). I love this idea!

Tip: Experience New Cuisine With a Guide

Ethnic cuisine can be especially daunting to someone who wants to know what’s in everything (lest a potentially evil ingredient find its way in to my meal). Descriptions on menus rarely do food justice, nor make me feel any safer about what I’m about to eat. I’ve found Indian restaurants to be especially good at using the ol’ “meet with SPECIAL sauce” routine on a menu, but never letting me know if I’m going to bump into black licorice flavors (which are still gross, no matter how many times I try them), etc.

For this reason, I’ve found it especially helpful to explore ethnic food with people who know what they’re doing. Either they grew up eating a certain cuisine, or really enjoy it enough to know what’s what and can interpret the menu against my interests. They’re also good at knowing the ingredients and flavor profiles, so they can warn you ahead of time if you’re about to veer way off track and spend good money on something you’re going to really dislike.

I’ve been able to enlist the help of friends as food guides, but this really depends on having ethnically diverse friends, which is easier to do in a bigger city than the middle of nowhere (so is eating ethnic food, for that matter). If you can’t find anyone, a couple of other options are to do some internet research before a dinner out to find things that others recommend, and/or to look up recipes from menus to see what kinds of ingredients go into things (I did this once with Indian desserts before I went to dinner). Another option is to try a buffet, which will allow you to test small portions of things before deciding what you like and want to eat – sometimes this flies in the face of my tip about trying new things at the best places (buffets aren’t always great), but it is possible to look around for a reputable buffet that will have well-prepared options.