Dovetail

Our first foray into this season's Restaurant Week was at Dovetail, the restaurant that, more than any other, is the symbol of the recent Upper West Side culinary renaissance. While many restaurants have a reputation for skimping during Restaurant Week, Dovetail started us with a shotglass of smooth beets, salmon, and creme fraiche and an addictive cheddar cornbread.



Next was cauliflower soup with a bacon, walnut, apple, and brown butter garnish that brought out all of the seasonal warmth of the soup, along with squid a la plancha with peppers, Thai basil, mango, coconut, and a radish relish. The squid was nicely firm, and the dish had a lovely controlled sweetness.



Our main courses were seared cod with Meyer lemon and sweet onions, and duck confit with radicchio. Both dishes had the potential to be uniformly soft, but the light sear on the cod and the crisp skin on the duck balanced the other textures and allowed the flavors to come to the forefront. Each bite of the duck confit made us like it more.



For dessert, we had a Black Forest gateau with cherry puree and almond bread pudding with rum raisin ice cream and maple butterscotch sauce. The dense gateau wasn't particularly memorable, but the almond bread pudding was awesome. It was like the French toast you always dream about having but can never find.