South side diners must certainly take delight in the latest addition to the fine-dining lineup in their area of town, Summit, in the former location of Emmett's Restaurant on Duval Street off of Tates Creek Road.
As the sister restaurant to downtown's Portofino, expectations were boiling over for Wayne Masterman's latest venture, which focuses on a wide array of food options - not simply Italian fare as with the restaurateur's original establishment.
The first thing that arrested my attention was the wine list menu, or, as it should be called here, binder. Over nine pages of bottle and half-bottle options were available, from the affordable $21 2004 Pine & Post Cabernet Sauvignon to the precious $679 1990 Ch‚Äöteau Haut-Brion Bordeaux. About two dozen reds and whites were available by the glass.
The appetizer selections were enticing and sundry, with fried calamari, grouper fingers, tuna carpaccio, fried green tomatoes, frog legs, oysters on a half shell and saffron mussels. After much deliberation, we went with the calamari, and it was dynamite - devoid of any rubbery texture, gently breaded and topped with a tangy vegetable tangle.
The entrÈe selections range from orthodox to adventurous, with a few steak options, oven-baked salmon, pan-seared chicken, yellowfin tuna, Alaskan halibut, sea scallops, osso buco (veal) and rabbit from Duncan's Farm in Boston, Ky. The sides for each of these selections were just as alluring, with Weisenberger Mill cheese grits and smoked gouda-oregano spoonbread making cameos throughout.
Aside from the entrees, the menu offered a healthy lot of standard sandwich options: a cheeseburger (with Kenny's Farmhouse white cheddar cheese), grouper sandwich, and, of course, the latest rage in fine Lexington restaurants: mini burgers. A small selection of pasta dishes is also available, but we figured we should leave the pasta to Portofino.
Outside of my grandfather's kitchen, I've never eaten rabbit, so I went with that selection to see how the critter translated in a fine-dining experience. My guest ordered the sea scallops. Each dinner came with a side salad, and I upgraded my salad to something called The Wedge, which is a quarter head of iceberg lettuce topped with a tomato cucumber relish, bacon crumbs and homemade buttermilk dressing. A parmesan crispelle artfully accompanied, and I could not have been more pleased with the salad plate.
Dinner was presented in a very formidable fashion, with each item specifically arranged on the plate. The rabbit came two ways: a buttermilk fried loin and a confit of leg, with spoonbread, baby broccolini and topped with a sun-dried cherry-lavender reduction. The fried loin wasn't a very inspired alternative to chicken, but the confit was succulent and fell right off the bone. The scallops came topped with an orange hazelnut reduction served with cheese grits. The meal was extremely rich, and, as was the case with both entrees, the fruit topping was a little overbearing and distracting, but it was the only criticism I could think of.
Somehow we found room in our stomachs for dessert and shared a cheesecake with a dollop of key lime icing and raspberries; it didn't let us down.
After it was all said and done, the bill, which consisted of two drinks, two coffees, an appetizer, two entrees and a dessert, came to $100 prior to the tip, which seemed pricey at the time, but after just writing everything out, it seemed like a fair price to pay.