On November 13, Coho Restaurant brought back our favorite Wednesday night activity, Global Cuisine Night! Our fall 2013 tour will take us around Europe for an exotic culinary tour. You can come along on this virtual trip around the world – no passport or pricey plane ticket required!
We want San Juan Island residents and visitors alike to know that there’s a place they can go just around the corner to experience gourmet foreign cuisine! The price is right, too, with a complete three-course meal starting at around $25, depending on that night’s cuisine and wine pairing. We want our patrons to eat what the local residents of the featured city would choose to eat on any given day, so the food, while still made with the highest-quality ingredients, is not designed to be “high-end.”
The prix fixe menu will include a new chef’s surprise – maybe a lovely amuse-bouche or a special dessert – every week. Suggested wines or spirits will be offered as an add-on to the meal, and very often the featured drink will correspond to that night’s cuisine; for example, our tour of Moscow in early 2014 will feature authentic Russian vodka spiked with flavors that our own Head Chef Bill Messick came up with. You may get huckleberries, fresh herbs, or stone fruits like pears and apples in your vodka!
Chef Bill loves the creative challenges that come with designing a menu around a new city every week.
“It’s fun, I get to play with food and learn; in the off-season there’s a lot of free time, every week it’s something different. First winter we did Japanese every night, lots of sushi, every Wednesday. I like doing something different.” He has added to the feeling of being on vacation by including a small fact sheet about the featured city with your meal, complete with the best places to see there and a teaser preview of the next locale, to whet your appetite for next week!
One of the key ingredients used in the Milan menu was mushrooms. Here’s a tip on the fabulous fungi from Chef Bill. Many people think that you cannot wash mushrooms before cooking with them, but you actually can – as long as you’re planning on using them the same day and you don’t soak them. Letting them dry on a towel, left in a warm spot in the kitchen, is also a great technique!
Future Global Cuisine nights will include trips to Barcelona, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, and more! We’ll see you Wednesday night at Coho!
Dinner in Milan
Amuse
Thinly sliced cappacola baby arugula caramelized onion
Potato Gnocchi
Wild mushrooms, fresh herbs, parmesan cheese
Veal Milanese
Veal breaded and sautéed in olive oil, roasted root vegetables, sautéed kale