Community Table Regroups And The Result Is Well-Nigh Perfection
A sojourn from Columbia County took us along a trail of daylilies ending in Washington, Conn., where we pulled into a parking lot festooned with even more orange and yellow lilies. On the side of a white stucco building, the words “Community Table” were painted in matching orange.
Entering Community Table from a pretty porch, we passed through a welcoming bar. In an entrance of botanical wallpaper, natural light and soothing shades of almost-there color, a yellow cast of a large moose head emitted a glow from within like something from the Damien Hirst nightlight collection, if such a thing existed.
The restaurant is owned by a member of the banking establishment and originally opened in 2010 with Joel Viehland as executive chef. It's enjoying new life since closing for a year to renovate and re-group with new chef Paul Pearson. Pearson is an Englishman with bona fides that include association with Marco Pierre White, the working class, cherub-faced, bad boy chef of London restaurants Harvey’s and Mirabelle who wrote White Heat Cookbook in 1990. White trained many chefs including Gordon Ramsay and was the youngest chef to earn three Michelin stars (and the first to hand back stars when he quit cooking in kitchens, claiming he didn’t need Michelin nor did they need him). White’s influence on Chef Pearson (White Heat Cookbook, he said, is the "best cookbook ever" and inspired him to become a chef) may have everything to do with the food we had that night.
Our server introduced herself with solemnity after which she inquired about water preference. When we asked of the source of the tap, she allowed it was indeed local, from a well and filtered three times, the first being a gravel filter, which was enough intel on the subject for us to order tap water all around. Upon her return to our table, our server waited for us to exhaust our collective curiosity about the five items under the snack portion of the menu, paused and said, “get the shrimp,” a special. We obeyed and ordered all of the snacks.
First we were treated to yet another experience with the color orange, this time in a dish of roasted carrot hummus painted on white china like a little boat with a thin, seed-studded black cracker as its sail. With symmetry, beauty and heat, this trendy variation on hummus could be the carrot’s big moment.
The shrimp was indeed special in both scale and toothsomness. Slicked with an herby oil, the two-crustacean dish was sublime, so sublime that we forgot to check with the SeaWatch app to determine its sustainability.
Other snacks revealed an “everything spice” Parker House roll with Ronnybrook butter. The spice of some origin (India?) and the butter tasting as if it were churned minutes ago had us flummoxed but happy. Scotch egg straight from the deep fry and filled with cheese and chorizo was fortified with preserve of lemon aioli and offered a satisfying crunch before reaching a core of a perfectly pliant single egg.
Finally, we shared the fingerling potato tostones served with kimchi aioli. This dish is created by steaming baby potatoes and pressing them between palms to flatten and fry, bringing local food to new flavor and mouth-feel heights.
Continuing on with the new flavors, we ordered a chilled cucumber soup. Featuring goat cheese feta and pistachio dukkah (an Egyptian nut and spice blend), it was a combination of texture, oil and heat.
We passed around the crudo of hamachi, fresh and firm, followed by Swedish meatballs served with marble potatoes, pickled cucumber and lingonberry. Both dishes proved outstanding in complexity and balance.
Second courses featured two fish dishes, chicken, steak, duck, a pasta dish and a vegetarian entrée. We ordered all but that last entrée and enjoyed them in a frenzy. Of the seafood — the halibut, slow cooked with summer squash, spring onions in a dashi broth; and the nicely seared and smoked diver sea scallops with faro and a Vidalia onion sauce with peaches and radicchio. The chicken dish featured a maple glaze and mushroom risotto with summer truffle and the roasted Rohan duck breast with beets, strawberries, puffed buckwheat and long pepper (a flowering vine cultivated for its fruit); both were original in flavor. The NY prime strip steak with blue cheese, roasted carrots and arugula was probably the most straightforward of the second course dishes, with meat that was seared evenly on the outside and cooked to a perfect pink.
Finally, the pasta dish was emmer, an ancient grain in the fluted-edged reginetti and adorned with bacon, peas and pickled scape gremolata, so satisfying it might be fun to try at home now while scapes are with us in July.
With the exception of one diner who felt the duck had a tad too much salt where the skin was charred, we were in agreement that the food was without flaw, even the dessert for which there were four offerings. We chose two: zucchini cake, goat cheese, pecans with a dollop of milk and honey sorbet; and bittersweet chocolate cremeux, salted coffee caramel with caramelized cocoa nibs, a combination rendering us wordless.
Bidding our server goodbye, we sensed a beatific vibe at the bar, and on the faces of a couple of couples claiming their reservations at the hostess station. There is no denying that this small, unassuming place surrounded by daylillies has white heat coming out of the kitchen.
Community Table Restaurant and Bar
233 Litchfield Turnpike (Rt. 202), Washington, CT
(860) 868-9354
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