Long Winded Review Time: Elevated Entree
I have been extremely excited, and I feel honored to have one of our local favorite Chefs to come and cook in my home. We all know Chef Keith Pardue for his culinary creations here in Pensacola, but now I get to try his tantalizing skills in the comforts of my la masion. I can not wait to his masterpieces develop and to try his Fall menu.
I have said it a million times, but I am in awe how Chefs are able to create and combine flavors of food to compliment each other. In my personal opinion, we have a small hand full of restaurants here locally who accomplish this and do it tactfully and perfectly. Chef Keith Pardue is no exception to this rule and tonight he hit it out of the park again with his piece de resistance dishes.
To start off the night, we had this extremely smooth flavor explosion of bacon Asiago fondue with caramelized onions served with some amazing fresh baguette bread from. The Asiago cheese was a perfect pairing with the bacon and onions. You could taste every ounce of the ingredients. I have some fondue left over; and I plan to buy some more bread and some Granny Smith apples to enjoy the rest of it.
Our next appetizer was completely amazing. These fresh scallops were paired with a slightly sweet butternut squash purée and an amazing blackberry compote. Both of the sauces by themselves were amazing, but when combined with the scallops it was beyond decadence.
Time to cleanse our palates with this exceptional sweet pear fresh spring mix salad topped slightly salty fresh feta; and amazingly homemade salty acidic cider vinaigrette.
For entrees, Chef was gracious enough to let us try two of his entrees, which was his extremely fragrant coffee rubbed medium rare Waygu steak. The flavorful crust on the outside was phenomenal, but the grade of this waygu melted like butter in your mouth. We also sampled, probably some of the best rabbit I have ever had in my life tonight. The bacon wrapped rabbit was moist, flavorful, and extremely tender. Of course, Chef didn't forget this base of smooth buttery creamy potato parsnip purée with a drizzle of his aromatic fennel and dill olive oil. To also accompany the dish, chef made some extremely fresh and delectable sautéed crispy broccolini with blistered tomatoes and onions.
For dessert, Chef brought on the southern charm with a twist on an apple cobbler. Just my personal palate, I would have preferred thicker chunks of apple in this amazing cinnamon sweet filling. This cobbler was topped with Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal, which is beyond genius. Seeing that my other half has a tree nut allergy, I would have loved to seen the topping broken up a little more and combined with some butter and pecans. But I love my husband; and we didn't need a trip to the ER.
Overall review: this was 210% worth every penny for tonight's dinning experience in my personal home with my best friend, her mom, the exceptional Chef Keith Pardue, and his beautiful sweet future wife Jessica Bosley. My only critique was on dessert, which is just my personal preference for larger pieces of apple, so food (4.95/5)
So do you need a great way to spending the evening at home with your spouse and not lift a finger for dinner? Look no further than our local star Chef Keith Pardue to turn your kitchen into Top Chef material; and he even brings all of the utensils, plates, cookware and cleans up afterwards!!!
In case you didn't know, he has started meal prepping now as well. read more