By Marty Rosen
Special to The Courier-Journal
We had quite the lively evening the other night at 610 Magnolia. The restaurant was hosting two parties of two (including my wife, Mary, and me) — and a celebratory group of 15 salespeople.
 Marinated Alaskan sablefish with green tea noodle and soy glaze are among the dishes at 610 Magnolia. By Kylene Lloyd, The Courier-Journal |
We're pretty accommodating folks ourselves, and would have gladly skedaddled to the empty tables on the far side of the room, or to the upstairs dining room.
Before we were truly settled, I asked our server whether an "event" was happening. She didn't offer to move us, but assured me, "There won't be any presentations or anything." Later still, when I asked whether the restaurant still served meals in the upstairs dining room, she replied, "We do when we're crowded."
Memo to management: Sometimes three parties is a crowd — and four-star hospitality involves more than simply delivering plates to the table.
The menu at 610 Magnolia is a six-course, fixed-price affair ($65; a vegetarian option is $55) that starts you out with an impressive sequence of culinary baubles (a sequence of six hot and cold amuse-bouche), and continues with tempting choices from a list of salads and soups, main dishes and desserts, with a farewell gift of petits-fours.
For us, the meal ended up being a mix of culinary epiphanies and corporate enlightenment. Those small, early courses included shrimp so surpassingly crisp and tender that I may never want to eat a shrimp again.
While our neighbors compared notes about their sales territories, Mary and I compared notes about the 610 BLT, a toasty cube filled with smoky bacon, foie gras and grainy mustard, and pockets of ravioli filled with lush, juicy bits of pheasant. And if a bit of dry, tasteless quail was topped with a lackluster tamarind sauce, well that was just a single miss.
As we ate soups and salads, our neighbors took group photos. I sure hope they got one of me eating butternut squash soup with truffled pheasant and wild mushrooms. That was one of the best soups I've ever eaten — especially when paper-thin slices of Parmesan melted into the soup and the sweet, butternut puree melded with the salty flavor of the cheese.
Our entrees arrived as the speechifying started. Over there, things got a bit maudlin.
Not for us. We focused on Mary's miso-marinated sablefish perched on green tea noodles. It's hard to improve on the natural wonder of sablefish, but Chef Edward Lee, who spent part of the evening chatting with friends at the end of the bar, is a masterful artist in the kitchen. Those big, round filets had the white, translucent glow of fine marble; the outer crust felt like velvet on the tongue, and when you put a fork to that fish, the thick flakes fell away in succulent slabs.
My pistachio-encrusted lamb chop with truffled white beans was nearly as fine.
When I asked our server to recommend a wine that might work with both entrees, she considered, expressed some fondness for a particular pinot noir, then revealed that it was sold out.
Left to my own devices, I settled on a red — a 2003 Michel Magnien Bourgogne ($70) — and asked the server how she felt about it; she consulted with the chef, who approved. And it was, just right, especially served in sparkling Riedel stemware.
So was Mary's mocha dacquoise. And though our server couldn't rattle off the four cheeses on the cheese plate, after thinking about it for a moment, she brought me a list of fine artisanal choices that went nicely with spiced cranberry compote and walnuts. You can email Marty Rosen at cjdining@courier-journal.com
610 Magnolia
610 Magnolia Ave., Louisville, KY
502-636-0783
Rating: 3.5 stars
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