Tonight four of us gathered at Castro Point restaurant in Mountain View for a bite and sip. Tuesday and Wednesday nights are wine/food pairing dinners at Castro Point, each week a different cuisine and wine theme. This week, the menu was Italian, and we brought our own bottles of Italian wine and the restaurant waived corkage. This is how they do these mid-week meals. Bring wine according to the theme and corkage is waived. It brings in diners on what would otherwise be quiet nights, and it’s a good excuse to go out and taste some interesting stuff.
First course: Beet salad – rounds of gold and light pink beets topped with roasted nuts, goat cheese, and long curls of celery and a red wine vinaigrette. Delicious, fantastic salad. Layers and layers of flavor. Second best dish of the night.
Villa Vitale 2005 Chianti – Tasty little Chianti, earthy and bright in turns. An excellent, excellent match with the salad vinaigrette and the beets, and a very good deal. Fairly traditional, and unsullied by excesses in winemaking. Larry. (~$8, Cost Plus)
Second course: Seafood Ravioli – wonton-skin ravioli stuffed with assorted seafood, herbs, ricotta. Topped with a bright tomato and white wine sauce with fennel and shaved Manchego cheese. Best food of the night.
Foradori 2005 Teroldego Rotaliano – Almost absent nose. Light, slightly floral dark fruit, excellent acidity (it IS an Italian red after all), and a hint of bitterness. Tasted blind I’d've guessed Dolcetto. Really a tasty table wine, a surprisingly good match with the second course and the fourth. The tart tomato sauce in the second course complemented its acid, and the fat in the steak tamed it, revealing nuances of the fruit that would otherwise have remained hidden. Good stuff. Not a stunning bargain at the price, but quite acceptable. Larry. ($19, K&L)
Third course: Chicken Risotto – Wild mushroom risotto topped with a roast half chicken breast in red wine reduction. Weakest dish of the night. Overcooked rice in an overly-dry risotto, topped with a fairly well-prepared roast chicken breast. Not very exciting, but tasty.
Giuseppe Cortese 1997 Barbaresco “Rabajà” – A bottle my brother brought back from Italy a while back. Heavily bretty wet-leather nose mixed with the floral/tarry Nebbiolo we love. Gamey and rustic, but in a beautiful way. Very funky, showing some age characteristics but still fresh. Not all that much fruit – this is probably near peak, don’t think I’d age it much further, but it’s in a very happy place right now, for those of us who don’t mind the leather/musty stuff. Excellent match to the wild mushroom risotto. Curly. (~$35, Italy)
Fourth course: Grilled Filet – tender tenderloin, potato/Ricotta gnocchi, and a few shreds of roasted pepper and caramelized onion, topped with a Pancetta/balsamic vinaigrette. Nice little steak, well-grilled and with good sear flavor while remaining tender. Gnocchi a little touch but with good flavor. Very pleasant but not as impressive as the first couple courses. The Teroldego was a better match for this than the Barbaresco was.
Fifth course: Marscarpone Cheesecake – light-textured Marscarpone cheesecake with graham cracker crust. Had an interesting flavor, not sure what it was. Condensed milk? Coconut milk? Just soaked up flavor from the graham crust? Whatever it was, good stuff.
I’m very pleased with Castro Point. They do a good job in the kitchen, providing tasty food in pretty but not overly contrived presentation. The wine pairing dinners are a great excuse to go out and taste wines in a group, and the prix fixe menus are good stuff. They’re in Mountain View, at the intersection of Castro Street and California Street. The service is attentive and friendly without being overbearing. My only complaint is that the (smallish) dining room can be rather loud, particularly due to the hard tile floor, hard ceiling, and numerous large windows bouncing sound around.
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