Jonathan Food & Wine Cellar

Visited on Sep. 24, 2012.

The service was excellent, servers were knowledgeable and quite helpful.

We began with the reindeer appetizer. This was a perfectly sized dish with 6 small slivers of reindeer with a light drizzle of very good lingonberry vinaigrette surrounding a small mound of luscious creamed rutabaga and some pickled mushrooms. The plate was also adorned with some tiny lingonberries. The lingonberry vinaigrette was a perfect complement to the meat.

The main course we chose was the house specialty, they call it cellar beef. Small slices of sirloin are cooked (yourself) on a very very hot soapstone. The meat was excellent, flavorful and tender. We tried the meat with all 3 of the sauces as well as with just salt and pepper. While the sauces were quite nice and interesting, we both agreed that we preferred the meat to be adorned with only salt and pepper, save the sauces for your roasted potatoes. Those potatoes were roasted to perfection and all 3 sauces went well on them. I liked the garlic sauce best followed by the chili sauce. I found the mango, banana, peanut sauce to be quite interesting but a bit too busy. The salad was a delightful blend but the dressing was not one that I would prefer (basically a thousand island) and was a bit heavy.

We had a delightful shiraz that was quite light and fruity, in fact it was more like a pinot. It was very good, good enough for two bottles.

We finished off with the bitter chocolate mousse and coffee. The coffee was okay. The mousse was more like a mousse cake but quite nice. A pleasant chocolate flavor that was not too sweet complimented by some slices of pickled kumquat. There was also a pear compote in the middle which I could have done without.