I stopped by The Sound Table on the way home from SC a few weeks ago. I sat at the bar downstairs. It was fairly dark back there, hence the crazy blurry photos.
My meal began with some champagne, of beers. Good and cheap. High Life really does seem to have a taste of its own. Though these cheap beers are fairly trendy. Did you hear about PBR going for $44 a bottle in China?
Speaking of beer trends, last night at The Shed, Katie tried to order a PBR but was told that they only had Genesee. Genesee is what my grandmother (picture a tiny Irish woman with a cardigan draped over her shoulders, two handing a giant mug of draft beer) in Pennsylvania drinks, and what she has been been drinking for as long as I can remember. And Yuengling is produced in Pottsville, which is forty miles from where she lives and where my father grew up. He tells me that when he was young no one drank Yuengling because that was an old coal miner beer and it was uncool. My how the times they are a-changin’.
Back to matters at hand, I started with the Goi Ga salad, a Vietnamase preparation, which also reminded me of some Thai salads. Small pieces of shredded chicken with cabbage and onion in a soy sauce and probably some sort of vinegar dressing. They also added pecans and mint. Really tasty except that they went really heavy on the soy sauce, so there was a pool of it when I neared the bottom of the salad. I had a glass of the picpoul blanc from the Languedoc. Maybe a little Sauv blanc-ish, the wine had some salty and burnt flavors that went aight with the food.
Next I had the spatchcocked chicken. What is spatchcocked, you and the guy who was sitting next to me at the bar might ask? Ruhlman is here to show you. I wasn’t expecting wings, I guess I had envisioned a whole quarter chicken. The flavor was good though; the singed chicken skin went well with the lemon and herb flavors, as well as with my glass of pinot nero (light Italian clone of pinot noir).
Good stuff overall, fair prices. I look forward to going back.
