Review: Vidalia Part Deux

I reviewed Vidalia for Restaurant Week this summer here: http://synaesthesia.wordpress.com/2006/08/14/review-vidalia/

The recap is that I didn’t really like it, and thought flavors were severely lacking.

Today I returned for the departmental holiday luncheon and had a different experience. We started off with three different amuse bouche. My favorite was a mild goat cheese covered in pastry with chives on top. Creamy and flavorful with the chives imparting a good contrast to the creaminess. Next was puff pastry with southern slaw and BBQ pork. There was too much pastry overwhelming the filling inside. The slaw and the pork itself were not particularly strong either, so it didn’t really even attempt to balance the pastry. The third was a fried crab cake. Delicate and relatively light, it was good, but doesn’t match Faidley’s – the standard by which I compare crab cakes.

For appetizer, I had the Whipple Farm salad with spring greens, bacon, hard-boiled egg, capers, Parmesan cheese, radishes, and pickled radishes with a mustard au jus vinagrette. I don’t know how there is mustard juice, unless it’s referring to mustard the vegetable. Bacon, mmm…, capers mmm… There’s some good sourness and sweetness from the pickled radishes and capers, while the Parmesan cheese provides a creamy, salty, umami element. The bacon gives well… bacon flavor. How might you describe it, but as that indescribable smoky bacon excellence. Let’s say it again. Mmm… bacon.

I went halfsies with my usual partner in crime. We each had a crab cake and some flank steak. The crab cake was accompanied by mango relish and some other kind of pickle. Again I am all about the soul of Faidley’s, but this was good. I like the fact that there is an opportunity for contrast with the mango relish and pickle. Meanwhile, the accompany sweet potato chips felt very flat. The flank steak was somewhat on the tough side at medium. The accompanying sauce was very good though, and a vast improvement from some of the sauces I’d tried during RW. It had the fruityness and umami that I found missing the first time around.

For dessert, I ordered the pecan tart with ice cream and a tuile. I liked the candied pecans, but I found the dessert so overwhelmingly and disgustingly sweet, I only ate half. The sweetness was so overwhelming it was difficult to distinguish the flavors.

Overall, I think Vidalia had some good entree and appetizer action. But I think that the desserts really need some work. Service was nice, and our server was a nice guy. He brought out some lemon chess pie to a table where one of the folks hadn’t ordered dessert. I wish I could have tried some.