I felt so guilty after we ate at Caviar Russe. We’ve gorged ourselves in the past with heaps of cheap junk food, all-you-can-eat buffets, and 20 course tasting menus. Despite all that, I never really felt like a glutton until this dinner. Don’t get me wrong – the food was incredibly delicious. But the dishes we had were so opulent and over-the-top that I couldn’t help but think we had committed some sin.
We’ve had a caviar tasting before at the Russian Tea room and had a lot fun. So I was looking forward to having caviar the traditional way with blinis, sour cream, and minced red onions. But looking at the menu, we were intrigued by the ‘Bites’ section. It was essentially a list of relatively simple dishes taken up a notch by some luxurious ingredient, caviar of course being a major one. To start, we got the gnocchi with caviar, which were 3 large pieces of gnocchi, each in its own spoon, smothered in a truffle cream sauce, topped with a teaspoon of caviar. I think the gnocchi could have been smaller to complement the delicateness of the caviar. But did it matter? No, because it was still gnocchi with truffle and caviar and inevitably amazing. We also got the caviar purses. It was a play on caviar served traditionally (above) with the caviar, sour cream, and red onions wrapped in a large blini to look like a pouch. I took it in one bite and realized it was the equivalent of eating 4 normal-sized blinis with caviar. Did I need to eat 4 at once? No. Was it still awesome? Yes.
Probably my most favorite-est dish of the night was the FLT: foie gras, lettuce, and tomato. Again, I was expecting a bite. It turned out to be about 2/3 the size of a Shake Shack burger, which still isn’t that big but definitely not one bite. The first bite I had was that “Oh my God”, “Wow”, eyes wide open, almost burst out laughing type of good. How had no one served us this before?? The foie gras was perfectly seared and it wasn’t some dinky piece. The lettuce and tomato actually held up to the richness of the foie and provided some crispness and acidity. The bun was soft but slightly toasted. It also added a nice sweetness to the
entire dish. They should bag that up and sell it in a food truck – I would easily pay $15 for that any day.
There were 2 things we ordered that I could have done without. We ordered caviar and eggs, which is exactly what it sounds like – scrambled eggs topped with caviar. It really wasn’t anything special aside from the caviar of course. For my entree, I got the steak tartare with lobster. It looked so good on paper to me (I love steak tartare) but the tartare was a bit warmer than I’d like and it was lacking acidity and texture. It could have been much better given the ingredients. Looking back, I would have rather gotten another purse or FLT or foregone it all together. She got lobster 3 ways, which was also tasty, but I think she thought we could have done without it. I think these unnecessary dishes really put in that guilt for us.
Caviar Russe is a great place to splurge on expensive ingredients. I wouldn’t say it’s very creative, but I guess you don’t really have to be that innovative with good caviar.
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