"Perbacco - Italian interjection: (ex.) 'By Jove!' or 'Good Heavens!'"
~ Wiktionary.org
Aaron had been wanting to try Perbacco for a long time, and a "Dinner Tales" event came up on TastingTable.com there for a prix fixe dinner with wine pairing, so we jumped on it. We bought the tickets about a month ago, and tonight we finally got to go!
We were greeted with a champagne cocktail and some beautiful appetizers:
And seated with about 15 other guests at a long table in their cozy upstairs "Barolo" room, with a large glass viewing window where we got a great view of the kitchen and the downstairs dining room.
Perbacco's owner and head chef Staffan Terje and owner Umberto Gibin graciously greeted the group and told us about the menu they had specially prepared - with Chef Terje choosing the dishes and Umberto selecting the wines - focusing on the fresh flavors of spring (what a fitting menu - it was the first day of spring today!).
The first course was a gorgeous "Piastra-Roasted Octopus with mint gras pista, fava beans, and new potatoes" - it was some of the most tender, succulent octopus I've had and all the flavors complimented each other so well:
Second course was an absolutely fabulous "Raviolo with black-truffle ricotta, duck egg, asparagus, and truffle butter" - the wonderful thing about this dish was that you break the duck egg inside the raviolo (the singular of "ravioli") to help create a rich, velvety sauce:
The main course was "Slow-Roasted Veal Breast with house-cured culatello, wild mushrooms, nettle polenta, and natural jus" - by the time they brought this out, we were so stuffed! We took a few bites and mournfully asked them to box up the rest of the deliciousness.
We thought we really should save room for dessert, and hoped that it wouldn't be too big - the portions were more generous than we'd expected already - it was a "Douglas Fir Panna Cotta with pine-nut caramel, mugolio, wild huckleberry sauce, and pine-nut crumble" - beautiful! And yummy.
At the end of the meal, they even sent us home with goodie bags that included some of their delicious spreadable salami, meringue cookies, a Citibank apron (DinnerTales is sponsored by them), and a Perbacco recipe:
This was a fantastic experience. We got to try a place we hadn't been before, at a ridiculously great price, we were treated like VIPs, and we got some wonderful treats to take home! When Tasting Table does another Dinner Tales event, I'll definitely be checking it out!
Related Links:
TastingTable.com
PerbaccoSF.com
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