Recently, I met friends at one of my favorite Sacramento area wine bars...58 Degrees & Holding...located in Midtown Sacramento, it is a favorite of mine for a number of reasons...great selection of wines (and now beers)...food offerings that change with whatever is in season...wine lockers that store personal collections for those of us with houses too small to do so properly...and then there is the most notable reason...a talented chef, F.J. Villalobos, who we were fortunate to have cook for us...
I had called ahead...I wanted Chef to know I would be entertaining good friends...one a vegetarian...I asked if he would prepare something "special" we could share while we drank bottles of Puligny-Montrachet and Pinot Noir...
Selection of bruschetta at 58 Degrees & Holding, Midtown Sacramento
"Special" does not adequately describe the sublime meal he created just for us...I was hoping for one or two vegetarian dishes we would share...instead, he presented us with several courses, creating one version of each dish for the vegetarian and another like it, but with a bit of meat added, for the two of us who eat it...
We began with a sampling of six different bruschetta...among them avocado and artichoke with olive oil, green pea with onion jam and a sprinkle of manchego, burratta with garlic...each a small bite of heaven...
He followed this with deftly-cooked, fresh asparagus with white anchovy fillets (for the meat eaters)...topped with one perfectly cooked egg, when pierced, it created a splendid dressing...
Next came a delicious salad featuring golden beets and prosciutto...followed by a succulent, perfectly grilled scallop paired with pork belly (I was so enthralled with my dish that I have no idea what the vegetarian version was!)...and finally, tender, handmade pappardelle with lightly-cooked spinach, kale, herbs and olive oil...
Each dish was remarkable...for the flavor combinations...freshness of ingredients...careful execution...beautiful plating...in fact, the food, the company, the wine were so good that I forgot to take any other photographs...just one more reason I'm called an "amateur photographer"...