Review: Field and Vine

[jducoeur]

So -- no shit, there we were, trying to figure out what to do about Thanksgiving, when we can't visit relatives nor attend the enormous dinner with friends that we usually do nowadays. Cooking a full T-day dinner for the two of us is a bit more work than I am usually up for, and Kate (mostly) doesn't cook. But not having a good spread on Thanksgiving would make me sad.

Enter Field and Vine. Kate and I did some hunting around places that would do most of the work for us, and they had the menu that was the best blend of "sounds like Thanksgiving" while still sounding interesting.

tl;dr: wow, that was great.

We picked it up yesterday: a box full of things to put in the oven and on the stovetop, with instructions for each one. Everything except the chicken was just reheating (carefully calibrated so that it could all go into the same 375-degree oven), and even the chicken was already brined, spiced, and sitting on the bed of herbs to cook it on.

We had:

• A half-chicken as the main course. On the one hand, it's just chicken; OTOH, that was really good chicken.
• A smoked confit turkey leg, to satisfy my sense that this was really Thanksgiving.
• Buttery mashed potatoes, with a chive-heavy creme fraiche to mix in at-table.
• Andouille sausage stuffing.
• Buttery-soft roasted carrots, with a brown-butter yogurt sauce and fried sage to put on top.
• Truffle-infused gravy.

Yum. It was a high-end-restaurant-grade meal, for which we only paid about a hundred bucks -- and given that we only ate about half of it (so we're getting another dinner out of it), even a good price. Filled the oven and used a bunch of pots for the reheating, but in the grand scheme of things it was really easy.

(No, we didn't buy dessert. It's the holidays, which means we actually have an excuse for my chocolate-bottomed pecan pie.)

So: big thumbs up to Field and Vine for rescuing Thanksgiving, and I hope they do this again in future years...

Comments

[writerkit]

I'm really starting to think that the main, major divide among pecan-pie people is chocolate versus not chocolate.

[jducoeur]

To some degree, although technique matters. I used to make a version that had the chocolate mixed in, and that was utterly meh -- I did it occasionally, but it was never all that great. This version -- with seriously dark chocolate as a hard, distinct layer on the bottom -- pushes my buttons much better: the bitterness of the chocolate balances the sweetness of the pie, rounding it out and greatly improving it.

[writerkit]

Ah. Yeah, that at least sounds different enough from the version I'm used to that I'd be willing to try it-- the thing that got me started on making my own was my college dining hall serving a version with chocolate chips layered just under the pecans, which I found to be just awful.

[sporky_rat]

Our school caf used to do, right before Thanksgiving and we all got out, little two (or three, sometimes the hand was a bit heavy on the nuts) pecan and chocolate chunk pie tart squares.

It was way better than pie.

[l33tminion]

Field and Vine is fantastic. Though going there still gives me a bit of a pang of longing for Journeyman, which preceded it in that space. Still, they're lovely. I haven't ordered from there recently, but I bought some wine from their popup during the Union Square Farmers Market, they have a really interesting selection.

[jducoeur]

Totally agreed about Journeyman. We were big fans of that restaurant -- it was actually where we brought our parents as they were getting to know each other. (Fabulous dinner, and the waitstaff were remarkably patient with the half-hour discussion of which wine to order.)

But Field and Vine is impressing me as a worthy successor in that space: we'll have to find more excuses to go there.

[alexxkay]

In a post referencing Thanksgiving, I found myself unexpectedly ambushed by feelings at seeing (twice!) a capitalized "Buttery". In all practical ways, I lost that years and years ago. But in a year full of loss, reminders of old losses ache anew.

(This isn't any sort of blame, just observing the inside of my head out loud.)

[jducoeur]

Ah, sympathies -- didn't even occur to me, since I don't think we ever did Buttery Thanksgiving per se. (Jane's and my Thanksgiving routine was Her Parents for lunch, then My Parents for dinner, then down to Darkovercon -- very long day, but fun.)

But I do have many fond memories of parties there...