ABOVE: Warm crinkle cake with red pistachios, cream cheese, saffron, candied kumquat, and malted milk ice cream.
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Chefs Danny and his brother Dante (also a cook there) used to host one of San Diego’s top underground dinner series, called Tortoise. If you look at Danny’s chef coat, you’ll notice a little turtle. And one of Wormwood’s excellent entrees came from Tortoise—the chicken roulade. Breast and tenderloins are wrapped in chicken skin, sous-vide, then flash fried and served with a sauce escabeche (basically the pickled veggies you get at a taco shop), sweet-sour carrots, and roasted cauliflower, all finished with wine and cream. Hard to know if the halibut is fantastic or if brown butter is just the answer to life. Specifically, it gets a celery root puree and hazelnut-and- brown butter sauce along with a red grape and caper salsa. Nearly everything they have is good to excellent: the flavors, the execution, the presentation, the booze, the service, the pretty little plates. My one complaint about the current menu is that it is a river of heavy cream—an unrepentant estuary of post-cow indulgence. Mexican influence aside, this is some of that old-school French cooking, when thick and luscious sauces are treated like duct tape: the fix for everything. While that may be true, some patrons may crave a few lighter dishes. For dessert, you must try the cheeseklava: a crinkle cake that is a wonderful mutant of baklava and cheesecake—with the papery-thin pastry up top and the cake below—with a shallow pool of saffron creme anglaise and candied kumquats. If you’re more of a berries ‘n’ cream sort, go for the Baba a l’absinthe—a riff on the classic French rum cake. Wormwood soaks their cake in absinthe and serves it tableside with creme fraiche- flavored whip cream, fresh berries, and honeycomb toffee. At Wormwood, the absinthe is the angle, the catch, and the elevator pitch that gets you in the door. The rest of it is why you won’t want to leave.
TASTING ROOM Wednesday - Saturday from 4-8pm
Pouring wines from our international and domestic portfolio focusing on sustainable, family run wineries. Try our wine flights paired with a Venissimo cheese plate!
quigleyfinewines.com
1551 4th avenue, San Diego, CA 92101
JULY 2022 48
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