Late Harvest Kitchen

A few weeks ago, Tim and I went to Late Harvest Kitchen with some friends for Northside Nights.  Northside Nights is like Devour Downtown, in that restaurants are meant to offer a multi-course menu for $30 per person, and this was the case with Late Harvest.  Our friends are big fans of the restaurant, so we were excited to try it with them.

The meal started with some delicious breads, which were served with herb butter.  There were a few types--I tried a yeasty roll that was super good.  Only negative is that there was only enough for us to each have one--I could have eaten a dozen of these!  Not that that would have been a smart choice to make, but do I love a good roll.

We then had to make some choices from our Northside menu.  For our starter, we had a choice of a butter lettuce salad with peaches and goat cheese, or butternut squash soup.  As it had been cooler out, the soup sounded great to 3 of us.  Unfortunately, it was VERY sweet.  I eventually nailed it on the head when I likened it to roasting squash with butter and brown sugar on it (my family's preferred way to fix acorn squash).  It tasted JUST like that.  The other two folks who had ordered it couldn't even finish it; I managed to eat most of mine, though it tasted like dessert, not the savory starter it should have been.  My friend that got the salad seemed to enjoy it, though it was a rather small portion.
 

I selected the Lake Trout with green beans and--supposedly--rainbow chard as my main.  It looks delicious in my picture--nicely browned--but it didn't have a lot of flavor.  The sauce was mostly just buttery, and it called out for acid of some kind.  The green beans were very good, but the rainbow chard seemed almost non-existent.  It was a fairly large piece of fish, but the plate just felt so empty!  They don't seem to serve starches with the majority of their mains--probably to get you to spend money on the 'sides,' which is pretty lame considering the average price of those mains (mid $20's).

We were suckered into going off-Northside menu and trying a side, though.  Figured we were getting a (comparatively) good deal on the rest of the meal, so Tim and I decided to try the fried green tomatoes with blue crab remoulade ($10).  It was probably the highlight of the meal, for me.  Here was the acidity and crunchy texture that was so sorely missing from my fish!  I ended up cutting up one of the tomatoes and having a bite with each bite of fish, and it improved the dish vastly.  The tomatoes were tart and fried crispy, and were served with that creamy crab salad...delish.  Only complaint on this one is that it seems MUCH more like a starter than a side to me.  But, that's nit-picking.

Tim opted for the chicken schnitzel with mustard spaetzle and capers.  He said it was pretty good, but also felt his needed acidity.  He said that when he got a bit of the sauce and the mustardy spaetzle in a bite, it worked pretty well, but that there wasn't enough to give acidity to the whole dish.

Our friends both got the pork chop with baked beans and bacon marmalade.  It's what they usually get when they go to Late Harvest, and they both enjoyed their meal once again.

BLUE CRAB REMOULADE

BLUE CRAB REMOULADE

 Dessert was a choice of chocolate mousse or sticky toffee pudding, and for all four of us it was no contest.  Sticky toffee pudding is a moist cake covered in a butterscotchy toffee sauce and topped with whipped cream.  It's served warm--in this case, VERY warm--and is super sweet.  I commented that I would have liked some ice cream with mine to cut the sweetness and was laughed at, but seriously, I find ice cream to cut the sweetness of things like this!  Perhaps it's a sign of how sweet it was to say that, but I maintain that I speak the truth.

I'd say our experience at Late Harvest was middling.  We had great service--our waiter was very pleasant and was generally there when we needed him--and a few items really shone, but we were left disappointed by the soup and our mains were just missing something.   Tim and I agreed that we'd be willing to try it again, since our friends like it so much.  

Website:  Late Harvest Kitchen