Firstly, in the interest of full disclosure, my wife and I are huge fans of the Harker/Sewell restaurant group (Eastern Standard/ICOB/Row 34/Branchline) and so were expecting to enjoy our meal at Les Sablons last evening very much.
True to the rest of their empire, Les Sablons is a great addition, though it is the most expensive of their restaurants.
Everything was really wonderful, so I’ll just list what we had.
First Course:
Kumamoto and Aunt Dotty’s oysters. I love small oysters, and Kumamoto’s may be my favorite. The Aunt Dotty’s from MA were also small, briny, and delicious.
Live Scallop - Special for the night, raw fresh scallop, sliced , placed back in the shell with a micro green salad and hazelnut gastrique. Phenomenally fresh, light, and the scallops were quite sweet. I dislike the taste of fully cooked scallops, so I tend to only order them when they are raw.
Second course: We split the Rye Spaghetti with pesto, black trumpet mushrooms, peas, and parmesan. This is a very simple dish, but it blew us away with it’s complex flavors. Also, it’s always nice when you say that you’re going to split an appetizer that the waiter asks if they can split it for you in the kitchen. I could have eaten the full dish, though!
Mains: My wife had the Rohan Duck with fava leaves, potato cake, and roasted cherries. She’s not a huge fan of duck (but did not want fish, or beef), and she really enjoyed it. I had two slices, and the duck was cooked perfectly medium rare, and was excellent with the accompaniments.
I had the Striped sea bass with olives, tomatoes, and a saffron sauce. This too was perfectly cooked and seasoned.
We had several cocktails from their list, and one off menu, all of which were excellently mixed by Ryan who previously slung drinks at The Hawthorne. My wife wanted a glass of wine with her duck, and the waiter suggested an excellent Gamay which paired perfectly.
For dessert we had two classic French desserts, the Paris Brest which had a mango cream, and the chocolate crepe cake which had about 20 layers of crepes. Both were phenomenal.
As with all of this groups restaurants, service was excellent (if a little too enthusiastic at points on the part of our waiter - though I’ll take that over indifference).
Again, not cheap, the total with slightly higher than 20% tip was about $340, so I won’t be going there as often as I go to their other places, but I will return.