Somehow, we’ve been married for 40 years and although we didn’t plan a trip or anything special, we decided to try La Bastide’s tasting menu. North Salem is a bit of a haul for us, but it was a nice evening for a drive, but given it was the Friday of the Memorial Day weekend, it took us close to an hour to get there for our 5PM reservation.
If you’re not familiar with La Bastide, it is the Michelin one star that occupies the downstairs of the building that has Restaurant Cenadou on the main level. We’ve also eaten there and have very much enjoyed it too.
When you arrive, you are given the choice of enjoying your cocktails and hors d’oeuvres outside on the covered patio or seated at your table. We sat outside with a beautiful view of a small mountain. We each had a martini and enjoyed the several hors d’oeuvres that were served to us. In particular, there was a small triangle of pane panella with dots of hummus and herbs. Next up was a poached oyster in an interesting broth in a darling little oyster-shaped dish. There was one more that I can’t really recall. I had my phone out the whole time intending to take photos of everything, but each time a dish came out, we eagerly tucked right into it, completely forgetting to take any photos the whole night! What idiots! Anyway, we were called inside since the kitchen was ready to serve the first course – an essence of Bouillabaisse, which was intense and delicious. Next up were red prawns from Montauk. I always associate red prawns with Sicily and I think you rarely see them here, but they were special and delicious.
Then came white asparagus with a seaweed pistou. I happen to like my asparagus cooked in the Italian manner, which is to say decidedly NOT al dente, which these were. However, it was a lovely dish even if I found the crispy asparagus not to my taste. Next came New England hake with English peas and razor clams. Delicious! And the main part of the meal ended with a piece of lamb brought to the table on a small Japanese charcoal grill. It was served with morels and a mushroom jus.
My husband chose the cheese course, but I was super full and wanted to enjoy dessert, so I only tasted a bit of his cheese. A pre-dessert of kiwi with charteuse, dill, and Thai basil. was served first. This was just ok for me since I really don’t enjoy desserts with savory elements. We both ordered the strawberry tart for dessert, which was lovely. And then they brought us another dessert to share with happy anniversary written on the plate. This was a lemon tart that also had batons of lemon-flavored meringue on top. Those batons were eye-opening! I had never thought about flavoring the meringue on a lemon dessert with lemon. So good and we picked them off one-by-one and crunched their lemony deliciousness. Then the chocolates came out along with tiny, still-warm Madelines.
We had orded a bottle of champagne that we drank for the whole meal. It was the perfect thing both for how it went with everything and for being very celebratory.
It was an excellent and interesting meal and although I am not usually a fan of tasting menus, I was glad we went to La Bastide and tried everything they offered. The room is lovely with only 6 tables for each seating, so there was a kind of quiet to the room which made the whole thing very relaxing. By the time we were done (some 3 hours later!) and went back upstairs, we realized that Cenadou is quite the local hangout since the bar was buzzing and the other dining room was packed.
