Summer Black Truffle Dinner at Sweets & Savories [Past Event

First of the Season Italian Summer Black Truffles
Thursday, June 4th, 7pm, Sweets & Savories Restaurant, 1534 W Fullerton
Opulent Seven Course Dinner, $50 per Person
One of Our Favorite Special Dinners of the Year!
Reservations 773 281 67778

Just made my reservation for this dinner. It will be my first visit to Sweets and Savories. I've heard so much about S&S -- and I do love truffles -- so I'm really looking forward to this. Thanks so much for the heads up.

Just ordered truffles for the dinner next week. Italy's due for a heat wave, not great for truffles. So Dig'um up boys!

The Wife and I will be there.

Two of us will be there. Chapulincha

June 4th Dinner SOLD OUT!
Sweets & Savories will however be offering black truffles as supplement to menu for the following week or until the truffles are gone!

I imagine that others will be posting photographs shortly, but the short version of the story is "yum." Especially the seared day boat scallop on the pulled duck risotto with shaved truffles all over the top. Cold truffled shrimp on top of warm watermelon was my second favorite. However, everything was mighty fine, and it was a wonderful introduction to S&S -- all greatly enhanced by being pretty much surrounded by LTHers.

Everything was inventive,delicious and so fresh.My favorite was the chilled English pea soupe,perhaps because it reminded me of England and King's college(petit pois).Ex-echo :the shrimp on watermelon and the risotto avec coquille Saint-Jacques.My daughter's favorite is still the sorbet au Gorgonzola,my husband preferred the ballotine and our friend the singer could not decide !!! Merci David,tout etait delicieux.Catherine or Chapulincha.

Yeah -- that chilled pea soup with the truffled goat cheese mousseline was mighty fine, as well -- and so fresh tasting. I'd say it was tied with the poached shrimp (which also had lobster cream and bacon -- so a very nice dish). And I enjoyed the truffle, arugula, asparagus, and shaved-fennel salad with pecorino (so what's not to like) -- also very fresh and well composed.

But everything was quite splendid. And generous portions, too. I'm grateful they didn't serve bread, because I would never have been able to finish all the remarkable food.

Here are some crummy cell phone pictures of my favorite courses and a rundown of the rest of the menu:

Chilled Truffle Scented Olive Oil Poached Shrimp
grilled watermelon, lobster cream, bacon

This dish was pretty good, but a little uneven. Two shrimp per plate. One of mine was WAY too salty, the other delicious. Around the table, most were fine, the occasional one overloaded with salt. Grilled watermelon was delicious. I couldn't find the lobster cream. It may have melted into a puddle of bacony lobster jus. Not that that was a bad thing. Truffle shavings were superfluous, but appreciated.

Chilled English Pea Soup
chervil oil, truffle goat cheese moussline semifredo

This was a very nice and refreshing cold soup. The truffle shavings and goat cheese really made what would otherwise have been an ordinary pea soup into something special.

Seared Day Boat Scallop
fois gras and pulled duck risotto, mango coulis

Unanimously voted at our table to be the best course of the night. The scallop was perfectly seared and the liver/duck flavored risotto was intensely rich and delicious. I suppose the mango schmear was intended to cut the richness, but I found it overwhelming and left it on my plate. Once again, the truffle shavings seemed an afterthought and not integrated into the dish. That said, more truffles? Sure. What the hell.

Pheasant Ballantine with Mortadella
sauce veloute, truffled mashed potatoes
This dish was a swing and a miss, for me. The pheasant breast was bone dry. The stuffing was a nondescript mush with chunks of mortadella. Fine, but nothing I need to see on my plate again.

Truffle, Arugula, Asparagus and Shaved Fennel Salade
lemon and pecorino
The meal went back on track with this wonderful, light, simple salad.

Buttermilk and Truffled Corn Sorbet
gorgonzola frecko
Sorbet tasted like it was billed - buttermilk, truffle, and fresh squeezed corn. It was interesting. In a good way. The gorgonzola frecko, which was like a cracker (I think they meant frico), was extremely strong in flavor. For me, it just didn't work at all. It took several minutes to get the taste out of my mouth. Our tablemates thought it worked, but only in combination with the sorbet.

Plum Cobbler
truffle ice cream
We were all running out of steam (and appetite) here. Cobbler - good, but nothing special. Ice cream - meh. Maybe my taste buds were tired, but I didn't taste the truffle. And the texture of the ice cream was a little off. It was lumpy and had some ice crystals.
I had a plum clafouti at S&S last week that was AMAZING. Too bad they decided to go with cobbler last night instead.

Good food, great service, and excellent company. All in all, a very enjoyable meal. And factoring in the BYOB, a definite bargain.

--Rich

I've been struggling with a cold the last week or so, which unfortunately seemed to hit its peek during last Thursday's Black Truffle Dinner.

I would say my taste buds were functioning at 25% of normal, so it's hard for me to comment too much about the meal. I thought the soup and the scallop were the real high points of the meal. Between being sick and the sheer quantity of food, I just couldn't eat much of the pheasant (but I did manage to eat all of the mortadella because, hey, that's how I roll).

As RAB said, great service and excellent company. S&S continues to be one of this city's absolute gems, and probably biggest bargain given the level of cuisine.