Scape Bistro

A friend of mine wanted to try out Scape Bistro in the Central West End and who am I to argue really. I always love to try someplace new and the restaurant was just beautiful inside.

The first thing that caught my eye on the menu was the raw bar, which is perfect since I was with my “seafood buddy”. I ordered the shrimp cocktail for us to start with (they were giant shrimp – isn’t that an oxymoron?) and then we picked out two east coast and two west coast oysters to try. I’m not sure I could tell the difference but the east coast oyster seemed a bit more flavorful even though I doctored both with cocktail sauce.

The other standard starter I always go with are crab cakes. While these Sauteed Maryland Style Crab Cakes were a good size (I’d say medium), they didn’t come with much sauce and I feel crab cakes should have a fair amount of moisture to balance out the breading on the outside. Again, I definitely could have made dinner out of their entire list of starters since they have so many unique dishes to try.

Since the raw bar and crab cakes were tempting me, in addition to a couple of fish items on the menu, I felt that I could confidently order the Kung Fu Girl Riesling…one of my absolute favorites since it has just the right amount of sweetness to it. But don’t get me wrong, I still would have ordered it if I had gotten the Veal Parmesan. My buddy tried their Hard Strawberry Lemonade specialty cocktail, which also was incredibly sweet and you couldn’t taste any alcohol. I easily could have had two of those.

I usually lean to getting the special since I know it’s fresh and seasonal and I got lucky that the Red Snapper was on that list. In addition to the fish, I ordered the other special as my side: risoto with beets and goat cheese. The little chunks of beets and goat cheese added a little bit of sweetness to the otherwise savory dish. My red snapper was light and flaky, but my buddy’s salmon was far better with a full, buttery flavor to the fish.

Luckily, fish isn’t too filling and we had split all the appetizers so we still had room for dessert! Of course I ordered the most chocolatey item on the menu: chocolate pate and gelato! So you had the richness from the thick pate next to the soft creaminess of the gelato, with only a couple of raspberries in the way. Mixing the two textures together in one bite was heavenly! My buddy’s hot apple pie probably could have used some of my chocolate gelato melted over it too…

Resources:

Scape Bistro = http://www.scapestl.com

Creole Cuisine seafood class March 23rd

The theme for this month’s seafood class was Creole Cuisine so I knew I was in for some spice. We started out with oysters (paired with a sparkling wine) that came with a side of tasty jalapeño sauce - a flavorful upgrade from just tossing hot sauce on ‘em.

Next came oysters wrapped in bacon, also known as “angels on horseback”. Not sure why. I wasn’t sure which one was the angel and which one was the horse either. I was thinking maybe it should have been “angels on a piggy”? Anyway, I took the bacon off so as not to ruin the oyster part but everyone else seemed to love the combination. Luckily, my friend Ellen was there to rescue me and took my bacon away!

We finally moved on to some meatier courses after that and I have to admit that I had a hard time picking my favorite from the last three courses.

The etouffee was delicious and had quite a kick and was paired with a refreshing Riesling.

After that we took a spice break with a simple salmon filet. So soft it melted in my mouth! Michael was a little daring and paired it with a pinot noir (a red!) from Australia.

And the last course was Shrimp & Sausage gumbo. The spice was more manageable in this course and it was paired with a strong Chenin Blanc from France.