Text 3822, 67 rader
Skriven 2013-08-22 20:13:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: today tastes 49
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The Hampton doesn't have a kitchen, but the Radisson
across the street does. Seems that there was this down-
and-out dive hotel called the Yankee Inn, and Johnson
and Wales (a college - now "university" - with a strong
specialization in hospitality arts) rescued it and entered
an agreement with the Radisson people where Johnson and
Wales would run the place and Radisson would get the glory.
So there are these kids paying good money for an education,
and they do the restaurant slave labor thing.

The bar-restaurant has the clever monicker Libations; I
went to test it out.

It seems to be a nice enough hotel, and the eatery space
is by no means offputting. I went in and looked at the
menu, whereupon a nice-looking young fellow greeted me and
asked me if I wanted to sit at a table or at the bar. The
bar, thank you, especially since the only other patrons
were two fairly attractive young women (who ended up being
dead boring).

The young fellow turned out to be the greeter and the
bartender as well, so it was his responsibility to take
care of me; he did a fairly good job.

On tap - Newport Storm, a red beer of some repute; Sam
Summer; and an IPA, Long Trail perhaps. I ordered the local;
it was fine.

As the Plum Creek oysters were listed at $2, I had half a
dozen of these plus the scallop appetizer, which gets rave
reviews on the Internet. The oysters were kind of shrivelly
but nonetheless still today's so not actually objectionable;
they were very briny but not very juicy: if oysters were
first presented to me this way, I'd be a richer man yoday.
One wedge of lemon per oyster - something must have been lost
in translation between teacher and student; a little cup of
mignonette that had been made with white onion rather than
the proper shallot or the somewhat less acceptable red onion.
The scallops, $12, were shockingly just three scallops, not
very sweet but certainly never frozen, done the way I like
them - seared outside, raw inside. These were inspiredly
served on a base of what the bartender called I forget,
tomato and bacon coulis or relish or chutney or something:
the sweetness of the tomato (along with some unadvertised
onion) and the umami of the bacon made up for the uninspired
quality of the shellfish themselves.

I thought I spied a new unopened bottle of Hennessy XO on the
shelf, so I asked the price (see previous post) - $32 a glass
- that was a bit rich for my blood, so I got another beer and
a calamari appetizer instead, saving $18 in the process. The
squiddles had tentacles; they were nicely fried (I'm sure
there's a manual for this); a sauce of olives, red onions,
small-diced peperoncini, and balsamic actually was pretty good.
Unfortunately, they were insufficiently drained, so there was
this big pool of oil on my plate at the end.

It turns out the competent young man at the bar was the
supervising faculty member; all the other staff came to him
for advice and instruction from time to time.

Another beer, and then it was time to toddle home.

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