Sorry this post is soooo late... I was really busy this weekend adopting a new dog!! Yay - we are so happy. Anyway, on to the Chow (pun intended).
After our superb brunch at Delmonico's that finished at 1pm, we weren't so sure we were up to having a 7pm dinner at Stella!. But a long walk around town and an order of beignets and au laits later, we built up the gustatory backbone to pull it off.
First off, the entry to Stella! is just charming. It's a carriage-type entrance and really harkens back to a time where ladies and gents were ferried around in horse-drawn carriages.
C and I split the starter of ricotta & pine nut ravioli with maine lobster, chanterelles, english peas and white truffle oil. This was an delicious dish, with wonderfully fresh flavors and a really delicate sauce. We each had a cocktail w/our starters - mine a perfect Manhattan, his a Maker's Mark and water.
I was really excited to see that their young sommelier had brought in a wonderful assortment of Spanish wines from Priorat. After much hemming and hawing, our waiter sent him over, and we had a really nice chat about what would work well with our meal. We ended up with 2000 Cellers Ripoll Sans "Closa Batllet" Grattalops, Priorat at $80. A slightly higher markup than I expect in the bay area, but I can't imagine he can make the kind of buys our sommeliers locally can. This wine was pretty tannic when it was opened, and it would have benefitted from decanting. After abou 20 minutes, it opened up quite nicely and was, indeed, an exceptional complement to both meals.
I had the Moulard duck breast. This was served with a foie gras wonton, a mooshoo-type stirfry and a cassis reductions sauce. Everything on the plate worked EXCEPT the stirfry - it was such a strong flavor that simply didn't mesh with anything else on the plate. I quickly pushed it aside, and all was well. The duck itself was cooked beautifully and seasoned perfectly. I actually really enjoyed the whimsical nature of the wonton, though I imagine some purists would call it blasphemy. The wonton wrapper itself was deep-fried but not at all greasy.
C had the stilton-crusted Angus filet, which was served with a bacon and yukon gold potato puree, and cognac peppercorn demi-glace. This dish was also great. The bacon was sooo smoky and delicious. I would have preferred the potatoes slightly chunkier, but I get that the puree works better with the refined presentation of the dish.
C had the bananas foster french toast dessert, with a glass of bual madeira (can't remember the producer - we'd imbibed quite a bit already), which he'd never had before. He thoroughly enjoyed both, and even I liked his dessert (i'm not a banana person).
I had the souffle cake to finish, which was as good as any I've had. I ordered a glass of the late-harvest Jumilla they had to round out our Spanish tour, but it was really awful. Treacly with NO acidity to cut the sweetness. No complexity whatsoever. Tasted like a haphazardly thrown together wine from some 2nd growth grapes that no one knew what to do with. Sidenote: I told our waiter that I really didn't care for it, and not only did he not offer to replace it with something else, but he left the damn $8 glass on the tab. Maybe I'm a jerk, but after cocktails, and $80 bottle, and 3 courses, I would have expected one of the above. Am I in the wrong?