I recently had the opportunity to dine at Forage when my lovely wife took me there for my Birthday. The dinner was a surprise,. but as we entered we were apprehensive after reading some other reviews. Our apprehension was unfounded..
The decor here is minimal, just as previous reviewers said. You are here to enjoy the food and excessive art and lighting would take you away from that focus, so I understand this minimal decor and I love it.
I will say that service was good, but could have been better. A new host was being trained and they appeared to be short a server as the chef brought out several courses. That said, it was a wonderful opportunity to meet the chef, it did not detract from the meal and timing was fine. It is nice to see a place where ownership takes such a proactive step and that the customer does not suffer because of a missing staff person.
So, the food, that is what you want to hear about right? Well, it was wonderful, amazing, great and good depending on the course. Nothing was poor or bad.
The evening started with the amuse bouches, all were excellent and well prepared. The standout best of the three was the truffled soft scrabbled egg. You must try it!
From vegetable plates to the meats and then on to the deserts the next 12 plates (yes, I said 12!!!) were all very good. The major standouts here were the scallop (very good), the foie gras (stellar), the chinese five spice roasted duck (amazing, melt in your mouth), and the honey crisp apple with popcorn ice cream (i never would have guessed that popcorn made an excellent ice cream).
If I have major criticism it would be the chocolate chip muffin they gave us on the way out the door. It wasn’t that good and kind of a sad memory to take with you after such a wonderful meal. It was dry and did not represent anything we had eaten that night. That said, I think the parting gift idea is a good one, just make it something that represents the menu and you’ve got a good thing going!
I will be back and I suggest you try it out. At $89 for 15 plates the price cannot be beat. The wine paring I think is $30 more and well worth it, though I did not partake on this evening. I ordered wine separately because it was a work night. (pairings would have been cheaper than my three glasses though.)
