Posted on January 11, 2025
Posted by Athena Scalzi
Last April, I posted about my favorite restaurant, Salar, and covered one of their monthly wine dinners. As much as I love their monthly wine dinners, I wasn’t able to make it to any others in 2024. Thankfully I managed to kick 2025 off with their January wine dinner.
If you didn’t catch my previous post, Salar is an elevated Peruvian restaurant in the Oregon district of Dayton. It offers fantastic food, wonderful cocktails, and superb service. They do an array of events, one of which is a monthly wine dinner, where you get to enjoy five courses alongside five carefully curated wines. The wine expert of the evening comes around at the beginning of each course to tell you all the info you need to know about what exactly is in your glass. It’s informative and yummy!
So here was the lineup for January, the theme of which was a tour of France:
This menu had a lot of words I didn’t know. I’m not all that familiar with French foods, or French wines for that matter, so this was more of a “I have faith in Salar putting out good food” moment than a “I love this menu” moment.
Let’s get right into it with the first course of the evening:
This was our starter, a salad of endive dressed with a lemon vinaigrette. I had recalled the menu saying there would be green beans with this dish but I didn’t see any, so I figured they must have just changed the menu last minute or something. Jokes on me because the green beans, Boursin cheese, and toasted walnuts were all completely hidden underneath the endive! So while it is not pictured, rest assured that there were in fact green beans and whatnot, it just took me a minute to find them.
I have never been a huge fan of endive, as I find it to be too bitter in most cases. I did, however, really enjoy the super bright lemon vinaigrette. It was quite acidic, and the rich creaminess of the Boursin cheese helped combat it from being overwhelmingly so. Overall this was a nice, light salad to start off with.
And here was the accompanying wine:
We started off with a sparkling rosé, which was much to my delight because I love bubbles. We were told this wine came from a region called Bugey, and that from the moment this wine ships out to the moment it arrives, it is continuously kept in a temperature controlled vault. It is lower in alcohol than a standard wine, sitting at around 8-9%. It is a touch sweet up front, but finishes slightly drier, which was truly unlike any wine I’ve had before. It was crisp and perfectly bubbly, and I really enjoyed it. This ended up being my favorite wine of the night, and I took a bottle home for about thirty dollars.
When I Googled this wine, I actually found some very interesting and informative descriptions of it. If you were curious to learn more about this unique wine, you can check out Kermit Lynch’s page or Depanneur’s page.
This is also the only photo I took of the wine throughout the evening, because the other glasses of wine just looked like regular white and red glasses of wine. This was the only one I found visually interesting enough that I felt I needed to share what it looked like.
Onto the second course:
Mussels are certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, but I really enjoy mussels, and was excited to see them served. They came with a fennel cream sauce, which I was not enthralled about because I generally dislike fennel. However, the fennel ended up not being unpleasant at all! I really thought the fennel would be overpowering but it was rather inoffensive. The bread was crusty and totally soaked in good juices. I hate eating mussels in front of other people because they’re a bit awkward, but all’s well that ends well.
The wine it was paired with was a white from the Bordeaux region. We were told that if a wine comes from this region, it must be red or white, no mixing is allowed. As for this white, it was made with three grape varietals, and was more Sauvignon than Blanc. This wine only saw stainless steel, no oak. If you’re someone that doesn’t really care for the grassy taste of a white from New Zealand, have no fear because this white is rather toned down in that department, with more of a minerality type taste to it, really. It comes from a clay-limestone soil, after all. I accidentally spilled half of my glass, but what I did have of it I enjoyed. And if you’re curious about the three types of grapes used or learning more about this wine, you can check it out here.
Moving to the third course:
This was Trout Almondine, a traditional French dish of pan-fried trout with a sauce made from almonds, butter, lemon juice, all that good stuff. It was served with fondant potatoes, which I definitely thought were scallops at first. The trout was cooked perfectly, flaking apart beautifully. It wasn’t overly fishy at all, and with the slight crunch from the almonds plus the brininess from capers, this dish was truly balanced. The potatoes were honestly next level. I have never had fondant potatoes before but they were so soft, so flavorful, and I was absolutely devastated there were only two on the plate, as I could’ve eaten enough of them to feed an army.
As for the wine, it was a red from the Sancerre region, and was 100% Pinot Noir. While it spent most of its time in stainless steel, it did spend just a moment in some oak vats, giving it minimal oak influence. The wine expert said that the acidity of it made it a perfect choice to pair with fish. There was also a very limited amount of cases that made its way to Ohio, making it a bit more of a limited offering. Now, y’all already know how I feel about dry reds. They ain’t my cup of tea (or wine, I suppose), so when I say a dry red is good, that really means something special. And it was pretty good! I was pleasantly surprised.
Fourth and final savory course:
This was another traditional French dish, a veal stew with carrots and mushrooms. This stew came with a jasmine rice that was perfect for soaking up all the extra liquid. First off, the rice by itself was phenomenal. I have no idea what they put in their rice, but it was so flavorful. I can only imagine they must have cooked it in stock and not water, but it was wildly delicious. As for the stew, the sauce was very cream-of-mushroomy tasting, which I enjoyed, and the carrots were super soft and sweet. I’ve never had veal before, but have always heard that it’s more tender. I think the veal in this stew might have been slightly overcooked, as it was just a touch tough compared to what I was expecting, but still had good flavor.
The wine was another dry red from southern France, and made with three grape varietals (pretty inexpensive ones at that), making for an inexpensive blended red. One of which was a Mourvèdre grape, which the wine expert said made for a silky texture (not that I really noticed that at all). This wine saw half stainless steel, half oak, and is said to be good to pair with things like lamb, stews, and surprisingly, spicy foods. I found this one to be more bitter than the previous one, and didn’t really care for it much. But if it sounds like something you’d like, you can check it out here.
Finally, dessert!
Here we have Crêpes Suzette, a French dessert in which the crêpes are in a sauce of caramelized sugar, butter, orange juice and/or zest, usually Grand Marnier, and lit on fire tableside. Sadly no pyrotechnics happened at our table, but at least this dish was astoundingly delicious. I absolutely love citrus, especially in dessert form, and this dish was a perfect example of why. The way the sweetness of the house-made vanilla ice cream contrasts with the bright, fresh flavor of the orange is truly heavenly. Amidst the indulgent creaminess of the ice cream, the candied orange peel on top provided some interesting texture. I am really having a hard time expressing how insanely yummy this dish was, but just know that when I finished it I genuinely felt saddened it was over.
The wine we finished with was my least favorite of the evening. Hailing from Southern Rhone, it was another blended red. This one had a smell I really did not care for, and a taste I couldn’t tolerate. I took one sip and decided that was plenty. Usually even if I don’t like the taste of a dry red, I at least sort of enjoy the smell, but I really hated this one. It was so bitter, and it was unfortunate to end on it. But I can only imagine some people there did like it! I am no wine expert, after all.
Another one of Salar’s wine dinners in the book! I believe this was my fourth or fifth one, and as always I enjoyed it. I will certainly try to make it to more than one this year, and I highly recommend this event if you live in the area!
Which dish sounds the best to you? Do you prefer sparkling wines or still wines? Are you well acquainted with French food? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
P.S. If you don’t partake in alcohol, they actually sell a cheaper version of the ticket that omits the wine pours! For this particular dinner, regular tickets were $100, and wine-free tickets were $75.
-AMS
Like this:
Like Loading…
← The Big Idea: Kristina W. Kelly