Eating out at the Bayport Cookery

I enjoy cooking but I enjoy eating out as well. Lara and my eighteenth anniversary is on the 27th - which is a Monday - so we decided to go out and celebrate on Saturday. I have had the Bayport Cookery on my lists of places to try for a few years now. It is a nice restaurant that gives you the option of 9, 6, or 3 courses. We had to pick nine of course. Here is what we got for our $85:



We started with a Wild Mushroom soup - topped with puffed wild rice. It also had what they described as a mushroom grilled cheese with it. It was all very good. Lots of mushroom flavor.






Next came a Wilted Escarole salad. Not really much "salad" here. The main part of the dish was a chicken liver agnolotti (a stuffed pasta). It was topped with roasted pear and hot bacon dressing. Neither my wife or I like liver but these were good. The liver was very mild - especially when mixed with the dressing.



Third course was a tempura shrimp. This was probably the best tempura I have had - very delicate coating. It was on top of an apple slaw - which had a mild curry flavor.




Next we were served chicken stuffed with coppa and figs. This wasn't real exciting if you ask me. It did have some spiced port wine au jus on the plate that was tasty.









The 5th course was a braised pork belly. It was sitting on butternut squash and topped with a crabapple chutney. This was not bad - but I like the chutney and squash better than the pork belly.





The bison short rib was my favorite of the main courses. It was topped with a horseradish creme fraiche. It had some gnocchi on the side that were pan fried - very good that way.







The seventh course was a cheese plate. The cheese was pleasant ridge - an artisanal cheese from Wisconsin. It came with some candied walnuts and some carrot raisin bread.





Finally - time for desert. The first desert was an apple tart tatin - I have always wanted to try making this. On the right is a maple flan.



The ninth and final course was a Chocolate Genoise cake and some pumpkin ice cream. I'm not a big chocolate guy but the cake was very good - it had a hazelnut mousse filling. The pumpkin ice cream was very good (Better than the cheese ice cream I had at my last nine course meal).

While the Bayport cookery was not as fancy of a setting as other nine-course meal places we have gone - the food was definitely on par and the setting was very nice. The restaurant does different theme menus during the year (Chocolate, wild game, mushroom...) so it would be a good place to go back to in the future.