Foodblogger Event: Four Seasons Holiday Preview
So the theme was to showcase Four Season's Holiday offerings from spa services to bar drinks and food from Trio. To the left were the drinks and their labels, they were kind enough to give out recipe cards for the drink recipes. If you see one you wanna try write me in the comments I'll get it to you. My personal favorite was the Yule-Thyme martini, it featured thyme infused vodka which gives you this cool refreshing taste. Then they add a splash of Oban (scotch) and garnish of smoked shitake mushroom which finishes the drink with a nice smoky flavor. In fact, it was so good I headed up stairs after the event with Maggie and Ginny of MaggiesAustin to drink the full sized versions of what we sampled. That might have to be my happy hour spot for the holidays.
As you can see Trio is featuring a prix fixe menu of some really wonderful items. I didn't get to try everything, but I'll give you color commentary on some of the highlights.
Four Seasons brought out every level of staff to great us, pictured is Tom Seguesta (the general manager) and Todd Duplechan (head chef of Trio). Everyone was so welcoming and made the event extremely inviting. They really wanted to make the point that they are try to regionalize the experience and not make it a heuty teuty generic feeling four seasons. In fact their sommlier was not present because he was busy blending the wines for the hotel/vineyard exclusive blend (and by hotel I mean only Austin).
Above we have the brussels sprouts and the winter squash salad. I'm not quite sure what the cheese was (it's listed as farm cheese) I mistook it for goat cheese but the flavor was not tangy or salty enough to be that. I happened to like the texture from the salad, the roasted squash was sweet and had a nice texture. The brussels sprouts were cooked very well and someone even commented that they usually hated brussels sprouts and these were quite tasty. I think the sweet potatoes were a good complement in sweetness to the sprouts. Excellent side additions.
How do you pick a favorite from these three. I didn't get a picutre of the souffle but all of it was wonderful. The salmon was perfectly cooked the lingonberry sauce added a nice bit of acidity. The rib eye was melted in your mouth and the red wine sauce was subtle and let you enjoy the flavor of the meat without getting in the way. No clear winner here, I wished I had a chance to sample the pheasant (got roped into a conversation and missed out). I wasn't sure what kind of pasta it was served over, I did get a taste of that, it was spaetzle like but wasn't enough to let me decide on the full flavor so that one has a question mark until I can do some more investigation.
Dessert was beautiful, I'll confess I didn't get a chance to sample it and I doubt my shots did it justice. However, I got it on good authority from Laura and Mariah from DiningInAustinBlog that the baked alaska was the winner and really hit the spot." The light dessert really complemented the tasting we had. The gingerbread cake was good, but not after all that stuff we just ate". There you have it folks Chocolate peppermint baked alaska is the thing to try.
A big big thank you to the staff at the Four Seasons Austin, it was a wonderful time, althought I didn't avail myself of the free hand massage (which I'm sure was delightful) everything else was fantastic. It was also great seeing my blogger friends.
Comments
BTW - the GM of the Four Seasons is Tom Segesta.
Great to see you!
Thanks for the corrections! I'm so bad with names.
Good seeing you as well looking for the tasty tour in a couple of weeks!