07 Oct Please The Palate Pick of the Week – Maude’s Greatest Hits – October 2017

Having made it a personal mission to go to Maude almost every month since they opened in 2014, when October brings a “Greatest Hits” from the past four years, it should not come as a surprise that the Maude October 2017 menu is the Please The Palate pick of the week. This dinner marked my thirty-seventh meal at Maude (out of a total of forty-six seasonal menus in total). Maude’s October 2017 menu offered a fourteen-course tasting of some of their Greatest Hits! With almost 500 dishes to chose from, they whittled it down to the top twelve. Although I am sure that there are many more dishes that could qualify, some dishes could not be included because the featured ingredient is not currently in season. The diverse menu played homage to four years of creative, diverse and distinct menus and it was yet another great meal shared with friends and good wine. Of the fourteen dishes we enjoyed, there was only one dish from a previous menu that I had not experienced . Below you will find the dishes of the Greatest Hits menu (on the left side)  next to the photo of the dish from the original meal (on the right side). It was a good thing I had chronicled my Maude meals so diligently. Chicory (October 2016) – Creamed endive with caviar and a dehydrated scallop chip Fig (August 2015) – Air dried lamb, tarragon, feta, fig, tomato water Chile (July 2015) – Cured hen egg yolk, crispy baked potatoes and sour cream, anchovy chile paste and Fresno Chile paste and black Chile powder Beet (March 2017) – Montana Brook Trout, nettle yogurt and nettle oil, cucumber and forged herbs Beet (March 2017) – Smoked trout mousse, crispy trout skin and forged flowers Grape (September 2016) – Lobster wrapped in French sorrel with bechamel and Marsala sauce Almond (May 2015) – Almond terrine (loaf) with romesco, beets and chanterelle mushrooms Beet (March 2017) – Borscht with brisket, bone marrow, picked mustard seed, dill and sour cream Citrus (February 2014) – Duck, Duck, Goose – duck mousse ravioli, smoked goose fat, pickled swiss chard, charred Brussels sprout leaves, fingerlime beurre blank Radish (April 2016) – A10 Wagyu marinated in Korean bbq sauce (bulgogi), black radish kim chee and cucumber Apple (October 2015) – Harbison cow’s milk cheese from Vermont, Apple butter and whiskey bread Pomegranate (January 2015) – Coconut panna cotta, pomegranate and malt with coconut soup Passion fruit (September 2015) – Yerba Mate meringue (pavlova), passion fruit curd, passion fruit ice cream and cacao nibs Mignardes Peach (August 2017) – white chocolate macadamia nut peach fudge Fig (August 2015) – Pan de higo (fig cake with licorice) Lime (January/February 2017) – aerated lime white chocolate Beet (March 2017) – beet fudge Our meal was not complete without some delicious bottles of wine! This dinner was my final meal at Maude in its current format. November and December will bring white and black truffles again (which I did in 2015) and then come January 2018, there will be a new format. It has been a joy to go to Maude almost every month for the past four years, enjoying one featured seasonal ingredient each month in a ten-course tasting menu. The October 2017 Greatest Hits is most definitely the Please The Palate pick of the week!