LaSallette, Sonoma, CA

Although we didn't have a huge meal at the most precious LaSallette on Sonoma's town square, it was a memorable experience nonetheless and there was no sneering at old people eating early and lightly (bonus points!).  In fact, we got excellent service and while I enjoyed a few glasses of a suggested full-bodied chardonnay by the glass, UD was not charged a corkage fee for his bottle of red purchased at some winery earlier that day.  Sorry for being vague.  A visit to California wine country is not all that conducive to memory retention sometimes.  Stay home and add Lumosity.com to your "favorites" list if you want to remember every detail of your life.

Offering contemporary Portuguese cuisine, this warm little nook with its plethora of dark wood, warm marigold walls and gleaming open kitchen enchanted me upon entry.   An amuse bouche in the form of a tasty little sausage slab topped with melted cheese and green olive was promptly deposited on the table while we perused the menu.

So, I've eaten a lot of bread in my travels, but the rolls at LaSallette definitely fall into the top five category.  Served with softened butter, these hedonistic, tender and toasty rolls were comprised of both wheat and corn flour along with yeast.  This is something you have to taste to understand because I don't have the vocabulary to honor them in the manner they deserve.  Truly and indescribably delish!

After noticing a plethora of cute little turtle shell-like copper containers when we entered the resto, I soon understood their function after ordering Pan Roasted Mussels "Na Cataplana” (out of the wood oven with tomato-lobster fumet, chouriço, cilantro).

Love!  Both the mussels and the toast points for dipping were sheer perfection and the top half of the serving dish doubled as a dumping ground for the discarded mollusk shells.  Voila!

UD enjoyed a tasting sampler of toasted almonds, nutty fava beans, anchovies, prosciutto, chorizo and lime studded cheese with pumpernickel toast.  Truly a meal in itself.

We wound things up by sharing the "Caramel Desire" trio of mini desserts....Cinnamon-vanilla bean crème brulee, Cobblestone Road ice cream with coffee-caramel glaze, and “carameled apple” in a pecan “boat” paired with Grahams tawny 20 year old port.  Yeah...you want this.

It's so annoying when I can't find anything to throw stones at (because gawd knows I love to be biotchy), but I can't. This was a seriously sweet dining experience from start to finish and we even got a silky, complimentary chocolate truffle "goodbye".

Ambiance, warm service, food quality and superfluous (and unexpected) mini-treats converged to make LaSallette one of our favorite dining experiences in California wine country.  So very nice.

http://www.lasalette-restaurant.com/



My blog entries contain the unmitigated, and sometimes unforgiving, dining truths and perceptions I experience as an ordinary restaurant patron. Every meal I post about has been fully paid for by one of the participating members of my personal dining party. I do not engage in the gratis blogger freebie dining events I'm constantly invited to attend and never will. If I ooze font-like love for a restaurant in my blog, it's because they totally earned it…not because they gave me free food or knew I was going to share the experience on the internet.