Similar to my comment in my review of Wassail, having a vegetable forward restaurant these days seems to be all the rage. However, where Wassail sputters, Semilla truly succeeds. It's gotten numerous "Best of" awards in the past year and this year received a coveted Michelin Star as well - and I would say a very deserving one at that. This place could easily go the direction of being haughty and overly conceptualized but everything about the food and service was spot on.
It's a tiny counter style restaurant in South Williamsburg and luckily they do take online reservations - however, they have a 3 day cancellation period which I think is a bit extreme. Given how popular this place is, a standard 1 day policy would suffice. They serve a 10 course prix fixe meal for $75 which given the quality is an incredible deal. As I mentioned, it's veggie forward/friendly - one of the dishes did have crab in it but you can tell them in advance of your allergies or preferences and they can easily make it vegetarian only. We started with a chestnut fritter with raspberry and pine vinaigrette. I'm not a huge chestnut fan but I am a huge fritter fan. This was perfectly fried on the outside and the chestnut flavor on the inside was light and paired perfectly with the raspberry and pine dipping sauce. So far a great start to the meal. The next dish was raw mushrooms with pumpkin seed ragu - fantastic. If you like the texture and earthy flavor of a raw mushroom (as I do), you would really enjoy this dish. It really felt like it was freshly foraged dish which I would usually shy away from but this was quite pleasing on the palate. Next was the pumpkin soup with green tomato and broccoli shavings served in a mini pumpkin. This dish was utterly adorable and reeked of fall comfort food. If there weren't 7 more courses left, I would have asked them to bring me a gallon more of this soup. The 4th dish was a spaghetti squash with crab and tomato - of all the dishes this one was definitely the one where I could see people saying it was too over done with all the foam in it but I'm a huge fan of spaghetti squash and I really liked it with the touch of crab and tomato that came with it that all the foam didn't really bother me too much.
The 5th dish was their famous sourdough bread with cowbella butter and buttermilk. As someone who is trying to be better about carbs, this was dish is what would put me over the edge. It was deliciously spongy and the butter creamy and salty. I could have easily eaten the entire order myself but really restrained myself since there were 5 more dishes coming. The 6th dish was a chicken of the woods mushroom with potatoes and beans. This is the first time I've had this kind of delicate mushroom before and it was definitely an interesting experience. It's quite a meaty mushroom and in keeping with its namesake it does have a similar taste to chicken - weird, right? By this point, I was getting pretty stuffed even though all I had eaten was vegetables. The 7th dish was brussels sprouts and leaves with smoked onions - it was wrapped in a giant leaf and looked a lot like a large grapeleaf dish. The leaf was a bit tough and vein-y and while this was a totally fine dish, I would probably rank it towards the bottom of the 10 dishes. The last main dish was a squash tart with goat cheese - everything about this dish should be amazing but it was quite salty and maybe because I was pretty full already but it felt too heavy of a dish. To end the meal we were served 2 desserts, chestnut ice cream with lavender and olive and a fig leaf rice pudding. I'm usually a fan of rice pudding but I thought this one was a bit too heavy on the rice and the rice was too al dente for me.
Overall this was a wonderful experience. The service was attentive but not overbearing and they were just all incredibly nice and warm to us. The quality of the food was top notch and I didn't miss not having meat or seafood at all. It's this kind of food that gives vegetarianism a good name but of course, it's not possible to eat like this every day unless you have a private chef. Plus at $75 this was a total steal of a meal. I'm not saying it's not an expensive meal but compared to a lot of other prix fixe meals out there, this one was well deserving of spending over $100. Total bill: $113/pp with tax, tip and drinks
Photo Credit: Yelp
No comments:
Post a Comment