Livello

I have been wanting to make a trip to the L'Ermitage Hotel to try the  cuisine of Executive Chef Joseph Elevado.  It's no fun to experience a gourmet meal alone so I had to wait for the opportunity. Then, last month I got an email from Gild City (gildcity.com) with an offer too good to be true.  It was a 4 course meal with a glass of wine, for 2 people for $100.00! I thought this would be a great introduction to Chef Elevado's cuisine. Needless to say, I found a friend to accompany me last night.

This elegant restaurant reminded me of a mini L' Orangerie. I purposely did not want to look at pictures as I sometimes want to be surprised. I was indeed pleasantly surprised and I just hoped the food would not disappoint.

Our server, Joe, short for Joseph but pronounced Jhosef, very French explained the menu to us and was very attentive throughout our meal. Stephanie, the food and beverage manager explained the wonderful wine we had which was Frost Watch, a Merlot from Sonoma.

We started with the roasted beet salad which had goat cheese and a zinfandel vinaigrette. It had a hint of sourness, not overpowering, together with the sweetness of the beets and saltiness of the goat cheese..... beautiful!

Our second course was a tuna sashimi. My friend and I normally do not like sashimi but I have had some in the past at Nobu and it was delicious. The way to eat this, is to have each bite  of fish with the greens that included fried shallots and OMG...how wonderful!  It literally melted in our mouths. This had pickled ginger dressing and you could really taste the ginger. It is not easy to get the right amount of sourness in a dressing. A lot of times, it overpowers and just kills the dish. This was really perfect.

For our main entree, we both had the picked grilled beef flat iron with broccoli and ponzu.
I cannot wait to have this dish again. It was so deeeelicious we couldn't get over how great it was. The broccoli was cooked just right, a bit crunchy and the beef was ever so tender.

Dessert was a vanilla creme brulee and chocolate cake. The creme brulee was burnt enough which we both loved. My friend liked the heavier consistency of this creme brulee. It was good but I prefer the lighter kind. The chocolate cake was very good with the marshmallow and salted caramel and pistachio ice cream.

At the end of what seemed to be a dream, I asked Joe if the chef was around. He said yes and would see if he could come out.  When he emerged, I thought he didn't look at all like Chef Elevado. He introduced himself as Benjamin Dayag, the executive sous chef. A young handsome Filipino born here. Chef Elevado was on vacation and he was taking over. We discussed the menu with him and I asked him if he sometimes cooks Filipino food and apparently they have tried doing crispy pata but didn't do too well as most Americans don't know what that is.  It was a real pleasure meeting him and we are eager to try the rest of the menu.