Wednesday, December 28, 2011.
Jamming Around Roanoke. Keswick Hall. The Best Dinner.
I was the first Fitz awake in the Atlanta Perimeter Westin Hotel , and went downstairs for fruit, juice, pastry, and coffee--my usual light breakfast. But then I considered that Mary Ann would not want to stop for lunch. So I added scrambled eggs, potatoes, and a sausage link to my plate.
One by one, the family trickled down. Each of them picked from my plate, saying they didn't really want to eat anything. That meant I had to get some more. In response, they kept picking. The waitress saw what was going on, but only charged me for one breakfast buffet. I gave her a big tip, but I should have at least asked to pay for another buffet. On the other hand the hotel was nearly empty, as many business-travel hotels are at this time of year.
Jude took the wheel as we left Atlanta. Mary Ann says he drives like a madman, but I found his time at the helm much earlier to take than Mary Ann's. My own driving is out of the question when many miles must be covered. I drive not for speed but for minimum tension and maximum enjoyment. I am the only person in our family who views those as valid considerations. They call my style "driving like an old grandpa."
We headed north on I-85 into South then North Carolina. A new route for me. Not so our next highway, I-81, I will always remember it the way by which I returned to New Orleans from the D.C. area after Hurricane Katrina, in October 2005. Parts of I-81 are concurrent with US 11, too. I covered those miles back in the fall of 1983, during a memorable, improvised trip to New England and Cape Cod.
We wound up traveling a bit on the two-lane part of US 11, but not because we wanted to. A traffic backup ahead of a construction zone brought us to a standstill. Mary Ann's mind was deranged by the delay. She took the wheel while Jude scoped out the disaster on his iPad. Bad news: the backup was at least ten miles long. His screen found an alternate route that took us miles out of our way down a narrow, winding road along a rushing river through primordially rural territory.
That ride was nice, actually. The loop dropped us on US 11 about eight miles along the backup. Had we not stopped for a bathroom and snack break, we would have missed a different roadblock--a traffic accident on US 11. The Dynamic Duo swung into action again, as Mary Ann drove through the parking lots of a shopping mall, a nursing home, and a school before finding a winding street that went through several miles of a suburban subdivision. After many miles and nearly an hour, we were back on the now freely-flowing I-81.
Jude noticed right ahead of us a truck that we had been following right before the construction jam. Everything seems better if you keep moving, though.
We arrived at Keswick Hall, just east of Charlottesville, Virginia, as the sun went down. A member of the Orient Express family of top-end hostelries (and therefore a former allied property with the Windsor Court in New Orleans), Keswick Hall has been on Mary Ann's must-go list for years. The building dates back to the early 1800s, and has been preserved well while becoming a full-service resort hotel. As is true in old houses in New Orleans, few lines in the structure meet at right angles. Our room was antique and rustic, with a clawfoot bathtub I wanted to try out but didn't.
I was looking forward to dining at Keswick Hall from the moment I saw the menu. I begged the chef to serve the tasting menu just to me while the others dined a la carte. The trick: assure the chef and waiter that we would not grouse about gaps in the service for those eating two or three courses while the chef's-tasting member of the party gets his eight. My family is wonderfully patient and tolerant about this.
Things started with an amuse of lobster and caviar with a light cream sauce: very nice. Next was spaghetti alla chitarra: pasta made by hand and cut into strands on a gadget with fine, stiff wires stretched across it. It looks like a guitar, hence the name. This was tossed with an eggy sauce in the realm of pasta carbonara, without the bacon. Flavor of truffle in there, too. Great eating.
Food for the others began to arrive. A couple of salads of butter lettuce covered with shreds of Parmigiana cheese only a few molecules thick. Hand-made gnocchi with locally-foraged mushrooms. Ravioli stuffed with cheese, its creamy sauce keeping strips of fresh sage and morsels of pear afloat--a great dish, said Mary Leigh.
A Manhattan made with a very good rye whiskey called "RI" got me through the first few courses, but now it was time for wine. Virginia makes a lot of wine, and has since the days of Thomas Jefferson (whose home was not far away from Keswick Hall). A winery called Kluge Estate bottles Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, both raised in the area. This was great with everything else I had coming.
Seared foie gras had to show up at some point, and here it was (below), served atop a small slab of seared (barely) tuna with a thick, sweet brown sauce. I don't think I've ever had tuna and foie gras together before, and I was pleased with this first time.
Then confit of duck with blueberries, atop fluffy mashed sweet potatoes. Yum, yum. The consistent trend of each course's being better than the one before peaked with two chunks of venison cut off a crusty loin, revealing its rare interior. That came out in a sort of hollandaise sharpened with mustard, and topped with red cabbage. It was a cold night, and I couldn't imagine anything more appropriate.
The girls abandoned ship before my dinner was over. Not only were they full, but the pacing of the meal--even from my plodding perspective--was very slow. Jude kept eating with me, having for his entree a filet mignon covered with mushrooms, fried onions, and fingerling potatoes, a red wine reduction over all. Looked good. He drank a beer with this. Passe just a few years ago, one can now drink brewski with even the fanciest food, as long as the beer bears an artisan label.
A plate of four excellent, well-varied cheeses served as my dessert. I also took a bite of Jude's chocolate mousse cake made into a tower and flanked with a citrus-flavored sorbet.
This was by quite a stretch the best dinner we had anywhere on this trip. At $327 for the four of us, it cost about what I expected. What I didn't expect was that it wasn't the most expensive dinner we would have on this vacation. It would be topped in that particular on New Year's Eve.
Keswick Hall. Keswick, Virginia: 701 Club Dr. 434-979-3440.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
