I’m going to take a small detour from our normal pabulum of potent potables to tell you all about a restaurant where I had the privilege of dining while visiting my mother over the Christmas holidays.

The week before Christmas, I was perusing one of my favorite food related sites, DonRockwell.com, and came across an entry for Chilhowie, Virginia.? I was a little dumbfounded.? Chilhowie is a very small town right off Interstate 81 in the southwestern part of Virginia, very close to the Tennessee state line.? You see, I grew up in an equally small town, Saltville, which just so happens to be about 8 miles from Chilhowie.? In fact, you have to get off the interstate at Chilhowie in order to get to Saltville.

Anyway, I was reading several posts about a restaurant in Chilhowie called the Town House.? The posters were throwing out platitudes such as “best meal of my life” and “one of the most exciting restaurants in the country.”? I immediately called my Mom and said, “Mom, we need to eat at this place while I in town.? Let’s get reservations.”? She agreed and after some discussion we settled for 5:00pm dinner reservations on Friday, December 26th.

Much more after the jump . . .

A little history of the restaurant.? Opened in 2002 by Tom and Kyra Bishop, the Town House was generally a steak and seafood place.? More upscale than the normal “out to eat” places.? Back home, going out to eat either meant a fast food restaurant or a Chili’s/Friday’s/Ruby Tuesday’s type of place.? Keep in mind that this area of Virginia is nowhere near a metropolitan center.? Roanoke, Virginia is two hours north and Bristol, Virginia/Tennessee is about half an hour south – neither huge urban areas in their own right.? Not happy with their success, Tom and Kyra decided to make the Town House into a world-class sophisticated fine dining restaurant.? In this vein they began a nationwide hunt for a chef that would, borrowing from an over-used cultural reference for a second, kick it up a notch.

What luck in that they found two chefs for the new direction of Town House.? Tom and Kyra hired two executive chefs, both from Chicago, John Shields and Karen Urie.? Chef Shields came from Alinea where he was sous chef under Grant Achatz and helped Alinea win Gourmet Magazine’s Best Restaurant in America award.? Karen Urie came from Charlie Trotter’s where she was Head Pastry Chef for two of her five years at the restaurant.? Chef Urie also spent two years at TRU working under Gale Gand, a James Beard Award-winning Pastry Chef.? In addition to these fine chefs, Tom and Kyra added Charlie Berg as Sommelier.

Chefs Shields and Urie use fresh, seasonal ingredients in all their dishes and wherever possible source their ingredients from the local farming community.? I was very happy to hear that most of their ingredients come from the local farmers and learned that the restaurant hosts a monthly “farmers table” dinner which highlights the produce or proteins from a particular farm.? Even the coffee comes from a local roaster.? Mr. Berg has amassed an impressive wine list and was very impressive with his knowledge of each particular wine and it’s pairing with a dish.? Ahhh, but I’m jumping a little ahead of myself here . . .

The Town House’s menu is divided into three sections.? The first section is called “one, two, three.”? This is basically your ala cart menu.? You can choose one course, two courses or three courses.? The second section of the menu is their four-course tasting menu.? The third section is their eight-course tasting menu.? With each tasting menu wine pairings are available.

I should say that honestly, I was a little worried about taking my Mom to Town House.? She isn’t a very adventurous eater and tends to stick to things with which she’s much more familiar.? She even told me that she looked at the Town House’s menu and didn’t see much she thought sounded very good.? Oh oh.? That had me worried.? But as I told her, when she was a kid she ate squirrel and I remember her fixing fried chicken gizzards when I was a kid.? Nothing on the menu would be as strange and exotic sounding as squirrel or fried chicken gizzards.

I had already decided that I was going for the full out eight course tasting menu with wine pairings.? My mom decided to go for the four course tasting menu without the wine.? Mr. Berg, who also performed server duties, asked if we would either both do the four or eight course menu in order to make it easier on the kitchen.? I was more than willing to offer to take the four course menu when my Mom, bless her heart, decided on doing the eight.? She said it was probably the only time in her life she’ll have this opportunity and she might as well go for it.? Huzzah!

And now for the good stuff . . .

While waiting for our first course, we were presented with an amous bouche which was as Mr. Berg described it, “Our version of an Oreo.”? It was a black olive cookie with olive oil filling rolled in parmesan.? They were light, intensely flavored of parm and olive oil.? Very very tasty and a great start to the evening.? In fact, it was so good, I completely forgot to take a picture until too late.? You’ll notice that this happened far too often during the meal, or rather when I’ve already taken a few bites and then thought, “OH CRAP!? A picture!”? Yes, I yell at myself in all caps.

Our next dish came out and like the amous bouche, it was a little taste, not included in the menu.? This time we had a profile of crab.? It was a crab chip – think of the texture of pork rinds, but made of crab – with a hunk of fresh crab in the middle dusted with Old Bay seasoning.? The crab crisp/chip was fantastic in texture and flavor, but once you got to the sweet morsel of crab in the middle – Wow.

Next was our first course.? Because my Mom had originally asked for the four course menu, she was presented with the first course she chose from that menu – the “Hot Chestnut” described on the menu as “quince braised with grapefruit, bay leaf, bacon ice cream, potato starch.”? I tried a taste and it was pretty good.? It was served warm and the main component was a mousse like substance that had shaved black truffle.? To me, the truffle overpowered everything else, including the bacon ice cream which I was dying to taste.? My first course was another crab dish.? This time it was king crab served on a gelee of lime accompanied by a coconut foam, tamarind and a muscovado sugar crisp.? It was light and delicious.? The flavors worked wonderfully and I loved it.

Our next dish was a “Candied Yam & Golden Char Roe.”? This dish was a perfectly cooked yam wrapped in a thin sheet of “prosciutto” which was made from Benton’s ham.?? On top of the bundle of tasty were tapioca pearls which were the consistency of rice krispies, the golden char roe, and “candied” portion of cotton candy.? All of this sat in a pool of black sesame oil which highlighted all of the flavors without overpowering them.? Another fantastic dish – easily within the top three dishes I had.

Prior to our next course, Mr. Berg brought out two freshly baked black-pepper ciabatta loaves and olive oil for dipping.? The bread was warm, crusty and delicious with the olive oil.? Obviously Chef Urie’s passion for baking brought these little loaves to our table and we were quite delighted to have them.

Our next course was “Chorizo Bouillon.”? It was a clear soup that had the requisite flavor of chorizo – absolutely delicious on its own.? However, the soup contained many surprises.? Small dices of cuttlefish swam with cubes of gelanitized sherry.? Liquid manchego cheese and egg yolk had been encapsulated to look like gnocchi floating in the soup.? Finally, one large capsule contained cuttlefish ink.? The ink was intensely flavorful, but in a good way, and everything about this dish sang.?? I really wish I had taken a photo of this dish.? I don’t think I remembered my camera until I thought about licking the inside of the bowl but was afraid someone would take a picture.? But I was very close to not caring!

The next dish was the lone quasi-disappointment of my meal.? I say quasi-disappointment because I think the dish was executed really well and for the most part I enjoyed it, except for the protein of which I’m not a big fan.? The dish was “Poached Squab Breast” and it contained Thai basil, a “golden egg” which was a bright yellow capsule (which looked just like an egg yolk) containing liquefied fois gras, and a root beer consume.? My problem was that the squab was very gamey and I’m not a huge fan of gamy flavors.? The fois, basil and rootbeer blended nicely with the squab and helped tame the gamy quality quite a bit and overall the dish was good – not great as the rest had been, but good.? This was the only dish of the night my Mom didn’t like at all.? Again, I was too wrapped up in eating to take a picture.

Next came the 36 hour Confit of Lamb in Nicoise Olive Oil.? Wow.? Just flat out Wow!? The lamb was fork tender and packed with flavor.? It was accompanied with a red wine reduction, mustard greens, crushed pistachios and a carrot taffy.? If I remember correctly, the foam you see in the picture is made from a brine that was used on the lamb.? It was salty and olive-y and a great addition.? Everything on the plate contributed to the dish without overpowering the lamb or the dish as a whole.? Fantastic dish, hands down.

Next up was another dish that I had seen on the online menu and was excited to try, the Gorgonzola Custard.? This had, as you might expect, a gogonzola custard (more like an ice cream to me), with a dollop of cooked cranberrys, a length of candied buddha’s hand and a beet meringue.? The meringue was crispy and a nice contrast to the cool smooth custard (ice cream.)

Our next dish was the “Crab Apple” desert.? Basically it was a scoop of the best apple flavored ice cream you would ever want to eat, a caramelized pudding ice cream, a funnel-cake-esque caraway seed tempura and oats.? The oats were scattered along the bottom of the plate and also contained in a thin test-tube looking container on the side.? When you cracked the tube’s shell (I’m pretty sure it was made of sugar) you could mix the oats with everything else.? Somewhere I read a review of this desert and the author said something to the effect that this was simply the best apple crisp you could ever have and it is unabashedly so.? I don’t think I can argue that point.

Our final dish was another desert called “Fall Colors.”? This one is hard to describe.? The flavors were of chocolate, raisins, hubbard squash, Indian curry and granola.? The colors were shades of brown and black, a bright orange carrot sauce, and a white chocolate sauce.? Textures ranged from crispy to soft and everything just worked.? Without having one in front of me to eat and explain as I write, I’m afraid my words will be insufficient.? Again, like just about everything else, it was surprising, daring and delicious.

Each of the dishes listed above was paired with a wine or beer by Mr. Berg.? Each went with the corresponding dish beautifully.? Mr. Berg was also kind enough to write down each wine I had with each course, which is unfortunately not with me as I write this.? But I can say that at least one of the wines, a Marenco Brachetto d’Aqui, I loved so much, that I immediately emailed Joe Riley at Ace Beverage and put in an order for a few bottles!

After our last dish, we ordered coffee and talked with Kyra Bishop a while.? We were also treated to a shot of pumpkin water with cream (I called it a pumpkin pie shooter, sans alcohol) and a vanilla lollipop.? The lollipop “stick” was fashioned out of a dried vanilla bean with each end inside the lollipop.? The lollipops were presented as ornaments hanging off of branches of a tree.? The flavor was pure vanilla.? If you’re a vanilla fiend like I am you would go gaga over these lollipops.? And trust me, I did!

Chef Shields came out and talked to us for a while and at the end of our dinner we were treated with a trip to the kitchen to say hello to Chef Urie and the three sous chefs working that night.

Was the dinner one of the best I’ve had?? Yes.? Is it worth a trip to southwest Virginia?? Yes.? I enjoyed my meal immensely and was very humbled by the graciousness and kindness of everyone at Town House.