Fine Food and Fine Wine at Paces 88 American Bistro

Exotic cheeses, caviar, a four course dinner, sabered champagne, olives, intermezzos, chocolates and Sommelier Harry Constantinescu. You can find all of these delicious treats at St. Regis Atlanta’s Paces 88 American Bistro.

As part of Standard of Excellence, CUTCO arranged for the group to enjoy an evening of fine food and fine wine at Paces 88 American Bistro. For me, it was the best part of the weekend.

Our evening of fine dining began with a reception of cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. Platters of exotic cheeses, bowls of olives and baskets of breads were scattered around the room for everyone to nibble at while they enjoyed a cocktail or glass of wine. I’ve had a lot of cheese in my day, but there were several cheeses at the reception that I had never tried before. My “cocktail” consisted of water with a lime and a lemon, and Steve’s was a concoction of Red Bull, Sprite and cranberry juice. We live large, you know.

Once the reception was in full swing, we were introduced to Harry Constantinescu the sommelier at Paces 88 and St. Regis Atlanta. Harry,  is one of 19 (I think I remember that correctly) sommeliers employed by the St. Regis hotels. He grew up on his family’s vineyard in Romania and has grown into an award winning sommelier. Harry selected all of the wines for the reception and dinner, and hosted a wine tasted for the group.

While Harry was educating everyone on fine wines, the servers passed around some very tasty hors d’oeuvres. There was caviar with creme fraiche on miniature potato cakes, live tapenade on crostinis and goat cheese tartlets with roasted tomato and watercress. The goat cheese tartlets were my favorite. I think I had four. I feel no shame for making a pig of myself; after all, I needed to make up for not having any wine.

To end the reception and to kick off dinner, Harry sabered a bottle of champagne. I’ve seen several bottles sabered before, but this is the cleanest cut bottle I’ve ever seen. Harry’s had practice. It’s easier to see when the picture is magnified, but the cork is just under Harry’s hand that is holding the bottle.

After the champagne was thrown back, we moved into the dining room to be seated for dinner. CUTCO people do not sit still, so it took a good 20 minutes for everyone to find a seat. Finally, the game of musical chairs was over, and we made our selections for dinner.

For my first course, I had the arugula and poached pear salad. The salad came with roasted beets, prociutto, gorganzola and a fancy cruton. It was dressed with a minus 8 vinaigrette. This salad was my favorite part of the entire dinner. The flavors and textures were magnificent. I was in love.

Steve had the seared tuna salad. His tuna was on a bed of marinated carrot salad and topped with wasabi caviar. A seaweed salad and cucumber foam accompanied the salad as well. Steve horked down the tuna and cucumber foam, but he was not a fan of the seaweed salad and passed it onto a fellow table guest who thought it was the greatest thing in the world.

After the first course was cleared, we had an exotic champagne sorbet to cleanse the palate. Talk about crowd pleaser. It was very refreshing and fruity. After Steve had downed his, and I had taken a drink of mine, the server informed us that the champagne had not been cooked down prior to adding it to the fruity concoction. Woops!

The next course of the evening was soup. I selected the tomato basil soup. Can someone please tell me what on earth is sitting on top of my soup? It looks like a paper thin slice of onion, but I’m really not sure. I honestly didn’t enjoy my soup. It tasted a little burnt to me.

Steve’s soup on the other hand was amazing. It didn’t photograph well, but it more than made up for it in taste.  Steve selected the roasted butternut squash soup. I’m a big fan of squash soups, and this was probably the best squash soup I’ve ever had. It was so creamy and luxurious that I wanted to curl up in the bowl and take a nap. While Steve was up taking pictures of everyone, I ate half of his soup. He should have known better than to leave a bowl of good soup unattended.

Following the soup we had another intermezzo. This time it was a hibiscus sorbet with pineapple infused vodka. Isn’t that the loveliest little scoop of sorbet you’ve ever seen? I had to chase that little pink ball all over the place trying to get a taste. When I finally managed to get a taste, I realized immediately that the vodka had not been cooked down. One little nibble of the stuff, I felt my body warm up in an instant. I told Steve not to eat it because I could tell it hadn’t been cooked and vodka can be risky business when it comes to gluten, and he was like “No way! It has to be cooked. The server would have for sure told us that it wasn’t. Especially after the last sorbet. Plus they know I can’t have gluten infested vodka” He took a bite, and nearly rocketed out of his chair from the obviously uncooked vodka. Lesson learned. Always assume sorbets have “raw” alcohol in them.

It wasn’t until 11:00PM that the main course was served. I have no idea why, but I ordered the herb roasted half chicken. I don’t like chicken on the bone, and I certainly can’t eat half of a chicken. It was chicken, nothing special. The vegetables that came with it were pretty good, but the best part was the root vegetable risotto. I had a few bites of my chicken and every last grain of my risotto.

I was so overwhelmed by my giant chicken, that I forgot to take a picture of Steve’s entrée. Steve had the braised rabbit pappardelle minus the pappardelle (a pasta). Instead of serving the rabbit in a pasta stew like it was listed on the menu, the chef mixed Steve’s rabbit into a risotto. I thought it was pretty yummy. Steve thought it was the greatest thing in the world. I don’t know how, but he managed to eat every last bite of that giant bowl of rabbit risotto.

When we first sat down to dinner, I started to panic because there wasn’t any dessert listed on the menu. As the evening progressed, my panic turned into pure stress. I leaned over to the guy sitting to my right and said, “I’m beginning to stress. There wasn’t any dessert listed on the menu, and so far, things aren’t looking promising.” He laughed at me and said, “That IS stress worthy.” For the record my dining buddy is known as “The Dish Washer” at CUTCO events because he never stops eating. In fact, after he polished off his steak, he ate someone else’s dinner because they went to bed earlier.

My dessert stress was put to rest when the servers started bringing out platters of miniature desserts and chocolates and placing them around the room. Not everyone feels this way about dinner, but I don’t think a good meal, especially one so fantastic, is complete until you have something sweet. I had one of those chocolate things in the back, one of those little cakes with the chocolate tokens on top (it was a key lime pie), and several of those little white balls. Now, at first, that little ball was very strange to me. It was really tart and weird. Once I spent some time with it, it became my favorite dessert of the evening. It was still a little ball of tartness, but the weirdness went away. I’m not sure what kind of fruit it was flavored with, but it was something tropical. It reminded me of something that I had in the Dominican Republic.

When dinner was over, someone at our table stretched back in his chair, rubbed his belly and said, “I’m stuffed.” A server was clearing our table at that moment and he responded with, “You should be. You’ve been eating for four hours.” It’s true, we had been eating all night long, and we all needed to be carted up to our rooms. It was totally worth it. Our evening at Paces 88 American Bistro was on my top 10 of dining experiences. I adore an evening of good food, good service and good company- even when the company makes fun my dessert distress.

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