During Houston restaurant week (actually 2 weeks - then extended an extra week), 84 restaurants, some of Houston's finest, offer a selected 3 course menu with a couple options for $35, which is a pretty good deal at a lot of these places, and $5 goes to benefit the Houston Food Bank. We saw it advertised and knew we'd have to hit at least one of them up. For Kimmy's birthday, we decided to go to Rainbow Lodge. We had heard good things before, and then recently found out that our friend's brother is the head chef there.
The menu looked really good., and we tried each of the two options for each course. Overall, the food was good, but I feel like they toned it down size wise and quality wise for restaurant week, which really goes against the spirit of the thing to me.
Anyway:
1st -
Barely Cooked Garden Tomato Bisque “Hot or Chilled” with panzanella salad & basil pistou - really nice, I ordered it chilled, Kimmy said she would have preferred it hot. It was like a really fresh creamy tomato sauce/soup, the little bit of panzanella bread salad was nicely dressed, and the basil pistou mixed with the soup made it even better.
Salad of Local Watermelon & Tomatoes with garden herbs & gelled white balsamic vinegar - Kimmy didn't care for this too much, the prosciutto was of course great, and I thought the gelled white balsamic was cool, but they didnt do much with the watermelon and tomato - can't blame them much for that though, they were really fresh and didnt need to be screwed with.
2nd
Charred Local Shrimp Laced with Espellete, garden peppers, chick peas & smoked ham bouillon - The shrimp was really tasty and well cooked, but the chick peas were the wrong texture for the dish. Nice flavors overall though.
Wild Boar Roasted on the Bone with purple mustard & spicy fermented cabbage - The boar was great, but the size of the dish was disappointing, it was only about 3 bites, when I hear boar I expect a man meal, haha. The purple mustard was interesting, haven't quite had a taste exactly like that before. The other disappointing thing was that the fermented cabbage that the boar sat on was really distracting. The cabbage was wayyy too acidic, and it blew out my tastebuds for the rest of the dish, while it lasted.
3rd
Coffee Crème Brûlée & Cardamom Madeleines - really stong coffee flavor and the texture was a little off, felt a little like coffee grounds, but I ate the whole thing, so I can't complain.
Rainbow Lodge’s Signature Croissant Bread Pudding with bourbon caramel & vanilla ice cream - WOW! AMAZING - one of the best desserts we've had. The description says it all I think.
Overall, we thought Rainbow Lodge's restaurant week offering was a little bit disappointing, but it was a nice experience nonetheless. The light was really dim in there and we didn't want to use a flash, so sorry for the dark pictures.
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