Make Your Reservations Today

Let's celebrate love!

We have been hard at work on a great menu for Valentine's Weekend and wait until you see it. It is prix fixe for the first three courses and the desserts are all new. We will have great wines just to pair with each course, to celebrate and just enjoy.

We are accepting reservations so please call as early as possible, 540-373-3338.

Our Valentine's Weekend Menu -

Starters
Arancini, Fried Risotto Balls w/Virginia Grayson Cheese
or
Kyle's Famous Baked Oysters with Creamy Bacon and Leeks

Soup/ salad
Roasted Tomato Soup
or
Fennel and Arugula salad

Main Dish
Sweet Paprika Garlic Chicken w/ Pasta
or
Tenderloin Tagliata

Desserts (not inclusive in prix fix dinner)
Buttercream Frosting Whoopie Pie
House-made Icewine Marshmallows


$35 per person, not inclusive of dessert, wine flights, tax or gratuity.

We will also be offering a flight of wines to pair with each course.

White Wine With Beef

Last night I sat down at the wine bar with my good friend Kellie to have dinner. This is always a risky proposition because the unspoken rule when you own/run a restaurant is if you are on the premises and needed, you are working. However I really wanted to eat the menu for restaurant week. Kyle had been working on it diligently and I had sampled enough of his trials that I knew it was going to be really good. So I took a chance, picked out a bottle for us to share and sat down.
It is always a challenge to pick out one wine to go with several courses, and mostly nearly impossible. However I had just tasted this new Spanish wine that had really impressed me and thought it's weight just might do the trick, even with the beef.
Ovo is a new import to the US and the kind of wine only a small, devoted wine shop can sell. It is a varietal not too many people have heard of (Albarino), from a relatively unknown region (Rias Baixas), that retails for $30 ($45 in the wine bar). Not exactly a slam dunk in the world of wine sales, but I had to bring it in even if I was the only one drinking it. Albarinos tend to be very fresh, clean wines with a zippy backbone and lovely orchard fruit aromas. This one is left on the lees in open cement containers for 6 months to become this rich, mellow white with flavors of pear, almond, orange peel and candied citrus. It is bone dry and unusual in the best possible way.
I am happy to report it went perfectly with all three first courses and stood its ground with the truffle-butter tenderloin very well. What this proves is that the rules of wine pairing can be broken, you just have to know when. That's what we are here for.

I Love Street Food

Chef Richard Sandoval remembers walking through the outdoor markets of Mexico City as a child, begging his parents for change to buy warm sopes cooking over fire pits.

Today, Sandoval makes the same corn-based sopes for his restaurants, Maya in New York, Tamayo in Denver and Ketsi at the Four Seasons Resort in Punta Mita, Mexico. But instead of filling them with shredded chicken or beef, he uses decadent toppings like duck confit and huitlacoche (a mushroom grown on corn, considered a Mexican delicacy).

Go to any major metropolitan city and you will see loads of options for street food. Sometimes it is just a humble hot dog cart, but increasingly it is so much more. Some of my favorites have been falafel in New York and carne asada in PG County, MD. Street food is for the people, by the people and I love that. Now many chefs are reinterpreting street food for their restaurants. Click here for the USA Today article.

Restaurant Week Downtown Fredericksburg

I have always been conscious of spending my money with independent retailers and restaurants. Independent studies have shown that up to 40% of the money spent in a locally owned business goes to directly back into the community. Even more than that though is the unique perspective independents bring to their craft. Food and wine is not created with the idea of being exactly replicated across the country and with that comes the freedom to be creative. All great reasons to forgo the big boxes and patronize the small guy/gal.
That's why I love downtown's restaurant week so much. The Road to Salivation allows anyone to sample the best of what independents have to offer.

From January 22-31, the city of Fredericksburg will host its 4th annual Restaurant Week: The Road to Salivation. During the week, indulge on three-course prix fixe meals from some of the city’s finest restaurants. Lunches are just $10.08 and dinners are only $20.08. Chefs will feature special menus to showcase their house specialties. Participating restaurants include: Claiborne’s, Bistro Bethem, Poppy Hill Tuscan Kitchen, kybecca Wine Bar, Capital Ale House, Kenmore Inn and Caroline Street Cafe. Fredericksburg’s charming historical district boasts more than 40 chef-owned restaurants.

We went to Poppy Hill last night and sampled their offerings, it was fantastic. At kybecca wine bar we are serving:

• Gougères - cumin scented cheese puffs
• Lolla Rosa Salad - brightly colored greens with our house-made Buttermilk blue dressing
• Braised Lamb Shank with leeks and carrots
• Choice of artisan cheese with fresh fruit or house-made dark chocolate mousse

Egg Expert

I bet you didn't know I was an egg expert. It's true, I love eggs and over the many years I have been buying and preparing them I have learned a few things.

• Very few things compare to the pleasure of eating a properly cooked, fresh egg.
• Pasture-raised chickens that feed on bugs and feed produce the absolute best tasting eggs.
• Egg white omelette's are an abomination (plus all the nutrition is in the yolk).
• Learning to make egg dishes takes years of practice, and is totally worth the effort.
• The darker the yolk, the fresher, tastier and higher quality the egg.
  

Eggs are so versatile and inexpensive that I cook them frequently for breakfast and dinner. I do know that it pays to find the freshest, best eggs you can get. Farmer's markets are the best place, but barring that cage-free, organic eggs are the next best thing. Just be sure to buy them from a place that moves their produce, you don't want to be stuck with product that has been sitting on the shelf for a long time.
My favorite egg cook book is The Good Egg which a James Beard award winning book. Tons of fantastic recipes plus step-by-step instructions to make perfect eggs.
My favorite dinner egg recipe is Michael Chiarello's Bitter Greens with Poached Egg and Prosciutto Bits. I have made this many times, always with great results.
Plus it's healthy and it has bacon. Sigh, did I mention I love bacon?

How I Think About Wine (or beer, or food for that matter)

I am a wine lover, but not a wine geek (i.e. interestested in the intricacies of production). I realized this while having dinner with a friend last night at Granville Moore's in DC (which will be another post unto itself). The distinction is that I really couldn't care less about this village versus another, how many hectares, how long the wine sat in oak, whether the harvest happened at night, and so on. It's the winemaker's job to care about all that. Unfortunately this type of recitation has become such a part of wine-speak that I can't seem to avoid it. When reps come by to sample their wines with me I can hardly avoid having my eyes glaze over when I get all the facts and figures of a wine recited to me. I further think that because all of this wine-speak has become such a big part of marketing that people think they have to know about these things and care about them to appreciate wine. It isn't true. You go to the farmer's market and pick up a perfect heirloom tomato and put it in your favorite salad recipe. You eat and savor it. Are you thinking about this farmer's low yields, soil composition and where exactly his farm is located (except maybe to get another tomato)? Probably not, but that tomato is damn good.

My job is to care about taste, number one. Is it delicious? Will it make my food taste better? I care about small production wines because they tend to taste better, take chances with their wine making and support small businesses. That's it. In the end every wine, beer and food memory sticks out because of the sheer pleasure of the moment. Cherished time off, eating a beautiful meal and connecting with people I care about.

In: Real Food

To those who know me this message will not be a new one. I believe that eating real food, as unprocessed as possible is not only better for your health, but easier, cheaper, more delicious and better for the planet.
It is astounding how many chemicals are used in processed foods and even the "light" varieties have ingredient lists that make me cringe. Sugar everywhere, gelatins, yeasts and more, all to replicate foods that taste better with real ingredients anyway.
When I saw this article in the Times today by Mark Bittman (of the Minimalist cookbook fame) I nearly jumped out of my chair. Beans, yes! real stock, yes! bacon, yes! fresh herbs, yes!

In addition there is such a thing as real wine. Wines made organically with no additives or sulfites and from indigenous yeasts. We are big fans of the Puzelat wines that are made this way.

YOU SHOULD ALSO STOCK:

REAL BACON OR PROSCIUTTO Or other traditionally smoked or cured meat of some kind. If you have a quarter pound of prosciutto in the house at all times you can make almost anything — simple cooked grains, beans, vegetables, tomato sauces, soups — taste better. And, tightly wrapped, it’ll keep for weeks in the fridge or months in the freezer.

FISH SAUCE You have soy sauce, presumably; this is different, stronger, cruder (or should I say “less refined”?) in a way — and absolutely delicious. Use sparingly, but use; start by sprinkling a little over plain steamed vegetables, along with a lot of black pepper.

CANNED COCONUT MILK Try this: cook some onions in oil with curry powder; stir in coconut milk; poach chicken, fish, tofu, or even meat in that. Serve over rice.

MISO PASTE Never goes bad, as far as I can tell, and its flavor is incomparable. Whisk into boiling water for real soup in three minutes; thin a bit (with sake if you have it), and smear on meat or fish that’s almost done broiling; add a spoonful to vinaigrette. Etc.

CAPERS, GOOD OLIVES (BUY IN BULK, NOT CANS) AND GOOD ANCHOVIES (IN OLIVE OIL, PLEASE) The combination of the three makes a powerful paste, or pasta sauce, or dip.

WALNUTS And/or other nuts, but walnuts are most basic and useful. Try a purée with garlic, oil and a little water, as a pasta sauce, or just add to salads or cooked grains.

PIGNOLI With raisins, they make any dish Sicilian.

DRIED FRUIT For snacking, in braises (braised pork with prunes is a classic winter dish), or just soaked in water (or booze) or poached for dessert. Don’t forget dried tomatoes, too.

DRIED MUSHROOMS Don’t even bother to reconstitute if you’re cooking with liquid; just toss them in.

FROZEN SHRIMP Incredibly convenient.

WINTER SQUASH AND SWEET POTATOES These store almost as well as potatoes and are more nutritious and equally interesting. A sweet potato roasted until the exterior is nearly blackened and the interior is mush is a wonderful snack. The best winter squashes (delicata, for example) have edible skins and are amazing just chunked and roasted with a little oil (and maybe some ginger or garlic). For butternut- or acorn-type squashes, poke holes through to the center with a skewer in a few places and roast in a 400 degree oven until soft. Let cool, then peel and seed.

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