A Taste Of The Season To Come
As editor of Park City Magazine, I am very fortunate to receive several invitations to media dinners each year. Local restaurants invite writers to come and sample their cuisine so that we're informed about what they're serving and we can give them some ink when the occasion comes up.
My very favorite media dinner each year is the annual Winter Menu Tasting at Deer Valley Resort. When Deer Valley opened in 1981, one of its missions was to serve food that was as good as you'd find at a fine hotel. It was a novel concept at the time, when dry, over-cooked and over-priced burgers were the norm at ski areas around the country. As we all know, Deer Valley lived up to its aspirations, winning countless dining awards over the last 28 years and earning a reputation for its fantastic cuisine. (As a matter of fact, Resort Food and Beverage Director Julie Wilson, who usually hosts the dinner, was not in attendance because she was receiving the Utah Restaurateur of the Year award from the Utah Restaurant Association that very night! Congrats, Jules - but we missed you at dinner).
Deer Valley has ten on-mountain restaurants, but the menu tasting features new items from the four evening restaurants, The Mariposa, Seafood Buffet, Fireside Dining and Royal Street Café.
The Menu Tasting is an intimate affair, with a small group of Utah food writers who've been getting coverage for our fantastic Utah restaurants in local and national publications for many years. So the evening is part mini-reunion with this talented group of people, and part epicurean extravaganza. The event begins with a reception in one of Silver Lake Lodge's beautiful great rooms. While the fire crackles, guests enjoy champagne and appetizers, this year, a celeriac soup with hazelnut raclette breadsticks, which will be served at Fireside Dining this winter, and a duck egg custard and shrimp gumbo, that will be served at Seafood Buffet. The gumbo number is served in an egg shell, just like my grandmother used to serve soft boiled eggs in the morning, with the top of the eggshell craftily carved off just so. It was warm, gooey, and delicious.
Guests then move into Silver Lake Lodge's kitchen, and are seated at a long "Chef's Table" squeezed in happily among hanging silver spoons, polished pots and pans, and the hiss of gas stoves firing. All of the chefs from the four restaurants are in attendance, hovering together in the kitchen, stirring and steaming and sautéing and garnishing and serving the new dishes of which they're so proud. Each comes out to describe his/her creation as it's being served.
We started with a Dungeness Crab Causa, served with aji chili and lime juice mashed potatoes, smashed avocado and tomato water. Kevin Dalebout, chef of the Mariposa, created this dish in honor of his Peruvian wife, who was weaned on this spicy yet light combination of flavors. The second dish will also be served at Mariposa this year - a buratta, fresh basil and heirloom cherry tomato salad on baby arugula, with extra virgin olive oil, and aged balsamic vinegar. This dish was the favorite of the evening for everyone, I think … with wide-eyed wonder and taste-bud excitement at the "burrata" served in a big ice cream scoop on top - "the dreamy, creamy cousin of mozzarella," as it's described by its producer, Gioia Cheese. It's mozzarella, but lighter than usual, and a bit gooey, almost like a melted marshmallow, as one of my dinner companions expressed. Let me tell you that the diners were about as excited by this dish as kids are about s'mores around the campfire - it was absolutely mouthwatering. Next, from the Seafood Buffet menu this winter, came the wild striped bass and crisp pork belly with sautéed frisée, chestnut and white bean purée and pear gelée. I have to admit, the "crisp pork belly" didn't sound so appetizing to me on paper, but the dish itself was perfectly balanced - the fish light and fresh, the chestnut and bean purée hearty and smooth, and little crisps of pork belly just a nice salty accent to the delightful little green blocks of pear gelée. Who comes up with this stuff? Amazing. Fireside Dining will add a roast quail with chard, apple and sweet onion sauté to its menu this year, cooked at one of the grand fireplaces, and Royal Street Café has added a simple spaghettini and meatball dish with house-made meatballs and tomato sauce with local farmhouse gouda, produced by Rockhill Creamery north of Logan. The outfit only has six cows, but you know what they say - it's quality, and not quantity, that counts. This dish hit the comfort food spot for all. Mariposa will be featuring a new lamb dish (the lamb from Niman Ranch in Laketown, Utah). The lamb chops are Masala-seared and served with pan-roasted cherry tomato sauce and lamb sausage "ravignocchi," a term the Mariposa team came up with - half ravioli, half gnocchi - a potato dough ravioli delicately filled with lamb sausage. This dish is an absolute mouth-waterer, even for those who aren't usually lamb lovers. Dessert was a roasted apple panzanella with almond panna cotta, and warm apple cider sauce (can you say all of the best fall flavors wrapped into one warm, gooey, lovely dessert?) and the Chocolate Cocolat, like a gooey little brownie with orange marmalade crème anglaise and caramelized cocoa nibs. Ooo, la, la.
Don't worry - we all shared dishes family style. No one needed to be taken out in a wheelbarrow, just in case you're wondering. Or course, we were full. So we took our hot chocolate course home with us. This is a fantastic gift idea, especially during the winter season - you can purchase elegantly wrapped hot chocolate "lollipops" - a wedge of dark chocolate with a dash of kahlua and other spices on a stick. Simply warm up your mug of milk, put this in like a spoon and stir it around, and before you know it, you're sipping a creamy, chocolaty cup of cocoa. I gave these to my kids at breakfast the next morning, and they loved them!
You don't have to be an editor or a writer to enjoy any of these wonderful new dishes - they're all available at Deer Valley restaurants this winter, waiting for you to come and enjoy. For full information on Deer Valley's restaurants, see their website at deervalley.com. Bon appetit.
Email
Print
Feed
Kristen Gould Case is editor of Park City Magazine and a freelance writer who publishes nationally. Weaned on the blue ice slopes of New England, she moved to Park City 25 years ago and hasn't looked back.
Your comment may be edited for brevity and foul language.