Commander's Chef Table

I ate at the Chef's table Friday evening. It was awesome! Our chef was Tommy Finch, who was great. He did a lot of asian inspired stuff, and told he he is getting ready to go to Thailand for a month. This was totally not your typical Commander's food, and frankly was better and way beyond any of the regular menu items.

Here's the review (I don't have the menu with me, so I don't know the wines. All were great, including two different Frog's Leaps - 1 white and 1 zinfandel.) We drank A LOT, and left there in a seriously inebriated state, so a lot of this is blurry, and I may have a course or two out of order.

Amuse Bouche - black grouper ceviche
This may have been the best course. It was basically a 3 inch ice cream cone. Served in a tomato waffle cone, with cilantro and lime ice cream on top. The ceviche was light, consisted of grouper, onions, cilantro, lime and loaded with jalapeno. It was very spicy. I do not remember what it was paired with, maybe a sparkling rose.

2nd - jumbo lump crabmeat and caviar. This was excellent crabmeat with a very spicy caviar.

3rd - fresh tuna spring rolls. very delicious, spicy sauce on the side. Paired with a very sweet and very delicious white.

4th - shrimp on a stick w/ braised pork bellies. My god, this was awesome. The shrimp were ground up and molded onto sugar cane spears, then seared, and served with the pork bellies and an asian fish/bbq sauce. Awesome. The pork bellies may be the best thing I've ever eaten. It was also paired with a white.

shots - Mr. Leroy - these did not help with the blurry vision

5th - foie gras beignets, seared foie gras, with a foie gras ice cream/ root beer float. This was hands down the most ridiculously absurdly rich course of the night. It was fricking good.

6th - seared grouper, in a broth, over very large exotic mushrooms. This was ok, but my least favorite dish of the night.

More shots courtesy of a waiter we know (didn't need them, but enjoyed them)

7th - seared black angus filet. There is some dispute here. When Tommy brought it to us, I swear he said ribeye. The menu says filet. It looked like slices of ribeye. The waiter said it was both. In any event, it was excellent steak, tender, slightly fatty, and extremely flavorful. I have no recollection of what it was served with.

8th - the dessert bomb. Basically one of every dessert. All were good. Hardly any of it was eaten, b/c we were done by that point.


All in all, best meal/food of my life. It was that good. I would definitely do it again and recommend it to anyone who likes food. Next time though, I will skip the pre-dinner martinis, the two I had meant by around course no. 3 I was pretty drunk. By the end of the night, we were all gone, and had trouble just getting up and getting out to the cab.

Edited to add: before dessert, we had the cheese plate. The cheeses were awesome!