I have a friend who thinks I’m a snob about food and can’t understand why I don’t like the Olive Garden. When she suggested we have dinner at the Sheraton, I fought to keep my eyes from rolling and mustered a, “Sure, let’s go.” She said that she had been there before and really liked it. I just kept quiet and drove.
The Sheraton in downtown Phoenix adjacent to the Convention Center is the largest hotel in the city, boasting 1,000 rooms. On this cold January night, the hotel is 100% occupied and reservations were highly suggested. There were a lot of young people, some wearing convention badges, as we made our way through the crowded bar toward the hostess. The hotel is new and quite attractive, but what really struck me was the delicious aroma of the restaurant. Don’t you love the smell of different dishes cooking all at once? When I am home and baking bread or slow roasting a meal, I will go outside for a few minutes just so I can come back in with a fresh sense of smell and revel in the aroma. To me, it is disappointing when you enter a restaurant and can’t smell anything. Here, it was like they were pumping it in from the kitchen and I loved it.
The restaurant has a very contemporary American wine bar layout. The chalkboard with the daily special read, “American comfort food with a contemporary twist.” We were seated quickly and offered menus, and since their website mentioned classic drinks, I ordered one – a martini Gibson, meaning I wanted cocktail onions instead of olives. After having to explain what it was to our server, she informed me they didn’t have onions. Classic! I could feel my inner snob rising and thought this was going to be a long night, until the moment complimentary bread and olive oil arrived. This had to be some of the best sourdough bread I have ever tasted. Warm, freshly baked, fluffy and light with a gentle crust – it was heavenly. The olive oil was steeped in garlic, and Italian olives sat soaking up the richness in the little ramekin. This prelude changed everything, and now I couldn’t wait for the rest. We hatched a plan – she would go dairy and I would go meat – and here’s what we ordered:
DISTRICT WALDORF SALAD $9 Apple matchsticks, endive, grapes, candied walnuts, celery boomerangs, red wine raisin vinaigrette. This salad was
delightfully fresh and complex. Served in a large bowl as is the trend these days, it was beautifully presented and perfectly proportioned with delicately and artistically cut ingredients. It was tangy, sweet, crunchy and filling. I couldn’t finish it, This would be a good one to split.
DISTRICT TOMATO SOUP $6 Garlic croutons, fontina cheese, garden basil. The garlic croutons were the best part of this soup. Probably made from that wonderful sourdough. If you didn’t have a crouton on your spoon, the soup was pretty bland. It had a lovely texture with bits of chewy tomato pieces, but texture alone wasn’t enough. If you could order a bowl of croutons they’d have something.
FENNEL CRUSTED TOFU STEAK $20 Seasonal succotash, creamed corn. To begin with, this dish was smartly served. Not only did it look great, the bowl was heated, which lifted the aroma of the fennel crust and fresh vegetables to your smiling face. You could feel the warmth as well as savor what you were about to eat. There were two pan-seared “steaks” nestled on a buttery bed of succotash with lima beans, creamed corn and other very fresh vegetables. The tofu also had a soft buttery texture complemented by the fennel crust. It was ingenious how they turned tofu into a comfort food with soft textures and fabulous fragrance.
HUDSON VALLEY CRISP DUCK LEG $22 Caramelized apple, garlic green beans, chipotle orange glaze. Here comes the large bowl again. I have got to get one of these for cereal in the mornings. The duck leg was crisp, as advertised, and very tasty. I enjoyed the glaze but wished there was more. A single duck leg is a small serving. They made up for it by resting it on a bed of caramelized apple, a lot of caramelized apple, too much caramelized apple. The green beans were crisp, garlicky and great. If I were the chef, I would have added some roasted potato to make the dish a bit heartier and cut back on the apples. Don’t get me wrong, it was all delicious, but the proportion of ingredients didn’t suit me.
STRAWBERRY COTTON CANDY [complimentary] When the dinner dishes were cleared, a basket of pink cotton candy was brought to our table. We had been watching this all night wondering why what looked like cotton candy kept finding its way to all the other diners. You could tell it was freshly made. We didn’t eat much of it, but it was different and fun.
TRIPLE CHOCOLATE WHOOPIE PIES $6 House-made peppermint ice cream. How to describe these? I guess you would say they were miniature Moon Pies made of two soft cookies with a chocolate cream in between and covered with a chocolate shell. My friend said that the ice cream was very good and the dessert was much cuter to look at than delicious to eat. I also noted that there weren’t any left on her plate after 30 seconds.
OK, so my friend was right and I was wrong about eating at the Sheraton. I enjoyed it and had a perfectly lovely evening It was actually hard to choose an entrée because there were so many dishes I would have tried.
because there were so many dishes I would have tried.
