Taste Of The Grape Hundreds of well-dressed guests attended the Ed Smith Lyons Club 4th Annual Wine Tasting event held Thursday, May 15, 2008 at the Nassau Country Club. Guests were able to sample the dishes from dozens of restaurants, wineries, and beverage companies at this spectacular annual tasting.
Funds raised helped benefit several charities including the KIDS Diabetes program at Winthrop University Hospital, Guide Dog Foundation, Lyons Island Eye Bank, Long Island Bombers (blind softball team), A.H.R.C. Autism Program in Sea Cliff, and several others. La Marmite’s (below left) offerings were seafood crepe and veal scallopine. Their seafood crepe was paper thin with a succulent combination of gulf shrimp, lump crabmeat and mushrooms in a sheer velvety lobster sherry wine sauce. Their scallopine was a superb creation of tender veal sautéed with shiitake mushrooms, sun dried tomatoes, shallots, in a Madeira wine sauce.
Piccolo’s (above right) brought some of their famous homemade ravioli. We tried the spinach and the five cheese ravioli in a semi-sweet vodka sauce with chunks of tomato that was incredibly fresh and creamy. At Bin 23 (below left) we sampled their homemade semolina pasta with two different sauces. First was the classic Bolognese sauce, which was hearty. Then was the Matriciana sauce had a smoky flavor and is made with onion, bacon, white wine, and cream with Italian fennel sausage, peas and tomatoes. They also had homemade mozzarella, which they breaded and sautéed in a garlic lemon demi sauce.
Downtown Bar and Grill (above right) served several of their house specialties, including crab cakes, spring rolls, skirt steak, and calamari. Their crab cakes were a real treat because they were made almost of all crab and expertly seasoned, moist and flaky. The calamari were oh so tender rings lightly breaded and tossed in a garlic butter sauce. Downtown’s spring roll consisted of crispy julienne vegetables that were fresh and garden sweet. The skirt steak was served with a trilogy of vegetables consisting of peppers, onions and zucchini.
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