Best of the Season’s Cuisine Featured on New Menu at Charleston Restaurant Circa 1886

November 30, 2007 (PRLEAP.COM) Lifestyle News
CHARLESTON, S.C.—The winter season, with all its holidays and celebrations, always makes for some of the best dining of the year, and the new menu from Charleston restaurant Circa 1886 is no exception. The AAA Four Diamond award-winning restaurant is offering a variety of dishes that showcase the freshest ingredients the season has to offer.

The favorite Carolina crab cake soufflé and spicy grilled shrimp are still first course options alongside new items, including tomato cobbler with semidried tomatoes, roasted garlic, oregano olive tapenade and parsnip chips, as well as quail ballotine with peach and cornbread stuffing, Tasso ham risotto and basil sabayon. The restaurant’s popular Trio of Soups option remains, featuring butternut squash, hearts of palm and spicy pineapple broth. For the salad course, guests may select a baby root vegetables salad with duck prosciutto, Riesling goat cheese dressing, organic olive oil and Southern micro greens or a baby argula salad served with crispy potatoes, radishes, saffron-infused cauliflower and pomegranate vinaigrette.

Executive Chef Marc Collins has created two options for the cheese course, including Camembert from MouCo Dairy, that features a pasteurized cow’s milk cheese, plain and washed rind cheeses, macadamia oat cracker, passion fruit gelée and cilantro. The second cheese dish, the Bermuda Triangle from Cypress Grove Chévre, features pasteurized goat’s milk cheese, pumpkin bread, pumpkin seed pistou and 12-year-old balsamic.

This season’s entrees provide patrons with a variety of choices, ranging from seafood dishes to beef, rabbit and pork. Highlights include the rainbow trout served with a Carolina Gold rice cake, Meyer lemon jam, toasted almonds, collards and pimento sauce; Berkshire pork and boar, a tenderloin and wild boar chop with Dijon potato puree, caramelized pears, rapini and brandy pork jus; and a beef tenderloin chop with garlic smashed potato, smoked Swiss goat cheese, Cipollini onion sauce and dried fig and parsley salad.

Pastry Chef Emily Cookson has also created five new winter desserts that put a unique twist on traditional seasonal fare, such as gingerbread pudding with pear butter, almond crunch and orange blossom honey ice cream, as well as brown sugar shortbread with coconut panna cotta, milk chocolate ganache and fleur de sel caramel.

Set inside a historic carriage house on the grounds of the award-winning Wentworth Mansion® hotel at 149 Wentworth St. in Charleston, S.C., Circa 1886 is a AAA Four-Diamond award-winning restaurant offering southern cuisine with a twist. Executive Chef Marc Collins combines the French, English, Caribbean and African influences popular during 1886, the year the Wentworth Mansion® and its two-story red brick carriage house were built, to invoke the culinary traditions of that era. Circa 1886 has also received numerous accolades, including the DiRoNA award for fine dining in North America, as well as the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence. The restaurant is open for dinner Monday through Saturday from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m., and prices range from $7 to $10 for first courses, $18 to $33 for featured courses, and desserts start at $8. For more information or to make a reservation, please visit www.circa1886.com or call (843) 853-7828.

Contact: Laura Thompson, (843) 406-6261,
lthompson@mettlerpr.com

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