The Herbfarm

What kind of freak puts her to-do list in her blog???...evidently my brand of freak.

The Herbfarm.

My wonderful husband arranged to take me there for dinner for the Big Birthday last Sunday just as I returned from my quilt retreat.  We've been planning to go for a long time, but hadn't gotten around to it.  It's a commitment of several hours.  I'm glad we went on a Sunday when the festivities start at 4:30 rather than any other night when they start at 7:30.  There's no way I would have made it.  It's exhausting in a gluttonous gourmand kind of way and it lasted about five hours.

As we were doing our husband wife thing of dressing and primping to go, he said he thought I'd better wear different earrings and produced a beautiful pair of extremely sparkly diamond studs that I pretty much haven't taken off since.  I am very spoiled indeed.  (To be fair, it is my birthstone ;)

The theme of our dinner was The Chambers of The Sea.  I'm going to let the pictures tell the story from here on in.  I was so giddy I was teary when we arrived.  It was the most extraordinary dining experience of my life...

We bought a copy of the print artwork to frame for our bedroom.

 This was at my place when we were seated.

The menu...yes, that's nine courses...with paired wines...and we ordered a flight of three ports, 10 year, 20 year, and 40 year.

This is us at the beginning of the feast.

First course...tuna, scallop, oyster.

King crab salad and foie gras custard.  There are no adjectives to do justice to the custard.  It was the highlight of the meal.  Exquisite.

I missed photographing a course here, but next up was salmon with a translucent slice of pork loin.

Halibut with short rib and farro.

I missed photographing a course here, but the next thing was this tiny baba with sherbet...the ebb tide.

Trio of desserts...I was getting uncomfortably full at this point, so BC had to eat most of my dessert.

This is the post-dessert candy that came with the coffee.  Two of everything.  You will notice that there are not two of everything on this platter as we had already begun eating it when I had the presence of mind to take this photo.

I should mention the little touches...when we gave our name to the hostess, she signaled someone to seat us who seemed to know who we were and consulted nothing as she led us directly to our table.  Just after the first course was served, the owner and his wife discussed the restaurant's history, introduced the chef and the entire staff including their culinary pedigrees and gave a thorough summary of the menu.  After dinner the chef came to each table to chat.

As we left we were each given a house made saltwater taffy elegantly wrapped.  Two days later we received a lovely handwritten thank you note...needless to say I can't wait to go back.  As we drove home we tried to calculate how often we could budget for such an extravagance and decided probably every couple of years...unforgettable.

If you have the opportunity to go...do.not.pass.it.up.