Another visit to 197 East Main.
Same players, but Michelle the aspiring photographer
had gone off to do photography, so our waitress was
a very young and pleasant but not personalityful
blonde person.
Wines: Trefethen Eshcol Cabernet 1999 (Napa) - same
as before, a little more cherrylike than I remembered
from the other time.
Sipp Mack Pinot Blanc 2001 - Lots of Seville orange
and grapefruit peel on the nose, good acid and body,
quite brill with the fish, but it took me 24 hours of
constant thinking to remember the negociant, so I
guess that it wasn't memorable in and of itself.

Lamb carpaccio - raw lamb leg, very lean, shaved fine
and served with greens and marinated potatoes. This
wasn't my cup of tea even though I like raw lamb, and
the olive oil in the dressing was excellent.

Chilled fresh pea soup with morel cream and onion
flowers - despite the fact that I am not a soup
person, the right soup will be appreciated in the
right circumstance. This would have been perfect had
the temperature outside been 80F and not 65F. But who
expected May weather in July? The morel cream added
little; the onion flowers a lot. I wanted a glass of
Amontillado with this, but it turns out there is no!
sherry here. Instead, I had Warre's 10-year Tawny,
which was a tad too sweet for the dish but far better
than anything else I could find on the menu (the
maitresse d' suggested the Warre's 1992 LBV, but I
thought that would be too red, sweet, and pruny.

Nicholas's pan-roasted chicken breast with truffle oil
was a hair overdone, but quite tasty, and the aroma
wafted all around the neighborhood. Nick the chef
later came out and apologized to Nicholas the diner,
saying that he'd been distracted because some guy who
had planned to eat there had instead crashed into
Nick's car, so he came in all contrite and left his
insurance information but was too embarrassed to stay
to eat (Nick later said that he'd probably have comped
the meal! for the poor guy). Turns out that the guy
who had caused the accident was Stephen, Nicholas's
second cousin. But we didn't see him to recognize when
he came into the restaurant to own up.

There's this weirdly named dish on the menu: "wolf
meets lobster," and it's a filet of wolffish
crusted in the pan and served over butter-poached
lobster claws and knuckles, which themselves are over
fava beans, grape tomatoes, and slivers of sorrel, the
sauce being a light but standard lobster cream. Turns
out the dish is yummy if a hair busy, and it was not
overcooked in any way. It was rich, as well, and no
way was I going to have any dessert after that.

Nicholas had the flourless chocolate cake thing
which was almost exactly like the one I had had
at Masa's a couple weeks ago. This one was made
with eggs beaten triple, creme fraiche, and
chocolate, cooked custard-wise in a water bath.
Topping was a huge blob of creme fraiche, and
there was a drizzle of caramel sauce around the
plate. Pretty yummy from the bite I tasted.

I tried a glass of the Jostock Riesling Spatlese 2001,
a pleasant appley wine of medium body, medium acid,
and medium sweetness. Good instead of dessert; I
wouldn't imagine it had enough character to accompany
dessert, though.

Had a good chuckle with Nick and the maitresse d'
afterwards, trading more Boston area restaurant
gossip of the sort that Nicholas knows vast amounts,
and I know a fair amount and make up the rest. [jk]
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