Some may opine that I have this high thought of myself when I am on holidays, but actually it is the name of the first restaurant we dined at in Carmel.  When I was doing research on where to go for dinner, this was one of the restaurants that immediately beckoned to me.  How can you not want to see “Carmel’s Most Romantic Restaurant”?  It also did not hurt the research that they had a very good rating in the Wine Spectator magazine’s yearly dining guide.

We started off with an Abalone appetizer that we shared.  Then my Bride ordered a dish of Free Range Chicken and I ordered a filet.  The filet was wonderful, but the chicken was out of this world and I think we ended up switching dishes.  I was so entranced by such a simple dish that was so perfectly prepared and it started me searching out other restaurants that featured Free Range Chicken.  I felt so parochial in my dining efforts after enjoying that meal.

Another little interesting fact that caught my attention was the steak knife that I was presented with to cut my filet.  The waiter brought me out a Laguiole steak knife to use.  If you don’t recognize the name, you may know it as the knife with the bumble bee logo on the handle.  I had never seen or held one, but I had read about them as being the finest steak knife to use.  The filet was like butter, so the knife may have been over kill, but I do enjoy the little nuances that I discover when we are out.  In fact a couple of days later, we were in a little boutique and I saw the same knives in a beautiful wooden box, when we priced them, my Bride said we could pass on them and stick to wine purchases.  She can be so practical at times.

We were picking out a white wine to start out with, and our waiter suggested the Georis Sauvignon Blanc 2000.  This wine was very refreshing especially after a day of walking the town seeing some of the beauty of the city and getting acclimated to the streets.  We then had a bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin 1997 for the rest of the evening and it paired well with both of our entrée choices.

After dinner we enjoyed dessert, coffee and some vintage port, marveled at the beauty of the city and then walked back to our hotel.