Five-Course Vegan Dinner @ Monks Wine Lounge

[walrus]

Hi all,

I found out about this dinner going on at Monks. Here is some info:

Thursday March 22 6:30pm
Monks Wine Lounge
128 W. 2nd St., Chico
343-3408
for information please call them after 4:30pm, ask to speak to the manager, Keely (pronounced "Kee-Lee") Coy
5-course vegan dinner with 5 paired vegan wines
entertainment and guest speaker Brad Peterson, the winery guy (the one bringing the vegan wines); he specializes in vegan wines and works with wineries in Germany and Nevada City
Seating is limited to 30 sit down guests, so please call soon for reservations; tickets must be purchased in advance
Monks Wine Lounge has a "european feel"
the Chef that is preparing the food specializes in vegan cuisine, and his name is Randall Blaine

Just for your own curiosity, the tickets are $50 per person.

The menu is being emailed to me tomorrow so I'll post that here so y'all can have some rough ideas.

ETA: I'm trying to touch base with them and let them know VegChico is in town. I'm also getting Karen to announce this on Animal Matters. Also, Karen will start announcing our potlucks and events on the air. :D

[grog]

i'm so there.

[Emiloid]

Sounds nice, but I can't justify that price. I don't care how good the meal is! However, I'm really glad that Monk's is doing this. It's a nice place.

And who knows? Maybe grog will meet a sexy genius vegan investment banker to share his hot tub with! :)

walrus, if you get the menu, please post it so I can drool anyway.

[LuC]

I love the idea of the wine pairings with each course of the meal. Several years ago we did something like that at one of the Niagara Ontario wineries and we really enjoyed it. (This was before being fully vegan :( ) I'll have to see if they have something similar with vegan wine but I have not found anything yet.

[bluedawg]

funny coincidence--someone posted on the milwaukee vegan meetup site yesterday announcing a very similar thing going on here. it's a vegetarian meal, but they said you can request for it to be made totally vegan. i'm not a wine person so i won't be going, but this must be a little trend. :)

[walrus]

Monks Wine Bar Spring Vegan Night!
Enjoy a great 5 course all Vegan Prix Fix meal
Each course paired with a Vegan wine
The courses are as follows
1. Appetizer- Vegan Bread with a single origin extra virgin olive oil from Pacific Sun and balsamic vinegar reduction. Served with a Sparkling Cava Brut.
2. Soup- Roasted Artichoke heart, red pepper, and garlic mock bisque served with sun dried tomato croutons and a basil chiffonade. Served with Sander Reisling.
3. Salad- Sunchoke and Hearts of Palm over mesculn mix with candied walnuts and dressed with Vegan Champagne and Shallot vinaigrette. Served with Casa Barranca Pinot Noir.
4. Entrée- Grilled Eggplant Napoleon with red pepper ragu and soy based yellow pepper sauce. Garnished with fried basil leaves. Served with Casa Barranca Cabernet Merlot blend.
5. Dessert- Mango Sorbet served with a banana, mint and basil compote. Served with Casal Dos Jardoes Tawny Port.
$40 per ticket and hurry, there are only 30 tickets

She told me on the phone the tickets were $50, so I don't know what's correct.

[mamaquilla]

I totally wanna go to this :silly:

[Emiloid]

Thanks, walrus.
:drool:

[michiganveganchick]

:drool:

[dropscone]

If I lived within 200 miles of this I would totally be going. That looks wonderful.

I am now sad :cry:

[Chijou_no_seiza]

Maybe you should start your own mini-party dropscone, I know you can cook! :)

[quagga]

I spoke with the owner/chef of Monk's today -- he used to run a successful vegan dinner once every season at his former restaurant in Boston, so he's doing the same thing here in Chico. He was a very nice fellow!

And, yes, Mr Q and I will be going to this.

[grog]

i didn't feel go hence never went.

how'd it go?

[quagga]

Hey grog -- we looked for you on the reservation list and didn't see your name. It's too bad you didn't feel well. I hope you're feeling better today.

Mr Q and I don't drink wine, so we had the server deliver our servings of wine to Walrus' table. She and her FS buds will have to give you a report on that. OK folks, I'm going to go all food snob on y'all...I have to give Monk's loads of cred for serving a vegan dinner, but....when you charge $40/plate, I really expect top-notch food and I expect that perhaps you've researched what restaurants like Millennium, Candle Cafe, and Real Food Daily serve.

For a spring feast, I think that the featured veggies were not particularly evocative of spring -- some asparagus would have been nice, for instance, or maybe the use of some of the nice citrus and apples that I've seen offered at the Farmer's Market.

1. Appetizer- Vegan Bread with a single origin extra virgin olive oil from Pacific Sun and balsamic vinegar reduction.
Served with a Sparkling Cava Brut.
Not too bad -- a simple spelt bread made with natural leavening and a nice locally grown and pressed extra virgin olive oil. Alas, the bread was not served warm, which I always find a really nice touch.

2. Soup- Roasted Artichoke heart, red pepper, and garlic mock bisque served with sun dried tomato croutons and a basil chiffonade.
Served with Sander Reisling.
Very good, thick soup. The croutons were chewy, not crunchy, which was a really nice change from the common crouton. The basil was wonderfully aromatic. Our favorite course.

3. Salad- Sunchoke and Hearts of Palm over mesculn mix with candied walnuts and dressed with Vegan Champagne and Shallot vinaigrette.
Served with Casa Barranca Pinot Noir.
Simple salad, really lightly dressed (like, almost not enough dressing). The candied walnuts were a bit over-toasted, not burnt, but a few notches past perfectly toasted.

4. Entrée- Grilled Eggplant Napoleon with red pepper ragu and soy based yellow pepper sauce. Garnished with fried basil leaves.
Served with Casa Barranca Cabernet Merlot blend.
The least satisfying of all the courses. This dish consisted of a small tower of about four slices of eggplant, the bottom layer was thinly sliced and well cooked, but the upper layers were 1/2" to 3/8" thick and in my opinion not quite cooked enough. The eggplant made both our mouths tingle a bit, maybe from undercooking. The slices were not battered and didn't taste like they had been marinated or anything interesting like that. The sauces were nice, especially the yellow-pepper sauce. The fried basil leaf was a nice garnish -- it was translucent and still perfectly green. It wasn't until you touched it did you realize that it was crispy.

5. Dessert- Mango Sorbet served with a banana, mint and basil compote.
Served with Casal Dos Jardoes Tawny Port.
A beautiful, perfect dessert. The compote sauce was really interesting (but a bit brownish -- my first impression of it was "OMG - it's cream of mushroom soup!") and a perfect counterpoint to the tangy sweetness of the mango sorbet. The sorbet was a little bit crystalline -- not totally smooth, like I would expect a perfect sorbet to be. It tasted great, as I said, but the texture was not perfect.

The service was perfect, the ambience lovely, and I am looking forward to the next go-round with summer foods...BUT I'm looking forward to the next VegChico potluck even more.

[Emiloid]

Thanks for the update. I hope the FS folks appreciated your donation. Does that mean part of your meal was tax-deductible? :p