Jim and I have a tradition we’ve done for many years, which is to go spend a night at the Inn at Little Washington between Christmas and New Year’s, just the two of us. (This does not go over well with the kids, who also want to dine there and spend the night, but we ignore their protests.)

The menu has changed a bit since I last blogged about a meal there, so I thought I’d take you through what we had last night.

We started, of course, with one of my favorite dishes there—truffle popcorn. You will never want to have movie theatre popcorn again after having this. The popcorn is tossed with some herbs and spices, but the whole point of this popcorn is that it is topped with shaved black truffle. Yummmmmmm…..

truffle popcorn

Next up were an assortment of amuse-bouches. These included miniature veal cheek sandwiches with homemade chips and miniature pickles;

miniature veal cheek sandwiches

the world’s smallest baked potato topped with caviar, “chips & dip,” cucumber rillettes topped with fish roe, and a red wine risotto ball.

assortment of amuse-bouches

Next up was a pheasant consommé accompanied by a chive gougère. The consommé was simply unbelievably fabulous and went onto my list of all-time favorite dishes (it’s a long list with a lot of Inn dishes on it).

pheasant consomme

The next course was an egg filled with a mousse of foie gras and port gelée. Not rich and decadent at all…

foie gras mousse in an egg

An old favorite of the Inn’s was resurrected and reformulated–fire and ice, which is now seared tuna served with watermelon radishes in a sesame-ginger sauce and topped with cucumber sorbet. It was like welcoming back an old friend.

fire & ice

I then had a raviolo of spinach topped with—you guessed it—white Alba truffles. Delectable (and so good for you, too!).

spinach raviolo (with truffles!)

Jim had sweet-and-sour diver’s scallops accompanied by a shisito pepper. The sweet-and-sour was restrained and elegant, and the shisito pepper gave the dish a nice contrasting flavor (or so I’m told, I didn’t get a bite of that).

sweet and sour scallops

The final “entrée” was a short rib of bison that had been cooking for 14 hours, served with mustard greens and topped with homemade onion rings. The slight bitterness of the mustard greens went well with the richness of the bison and the slightly sweet onion rings.

short rib of bison

The palate cleanser was the Inn’s version of a dreamsicle accompanied with crumbs of shortbread.

dreamsicle

And finally (not pictured) was a Granny Smith apple tart (for me) and a visit by Faira the Cow and Cameron the cheese maestro (for Jim). And the beautiful cappuccino accompanied by a slice of biscotti.

oh, biscotti!

The Inn was, of course, still decorated for the holidays, with festively decorated trees and garlands and holiday lights. It was a wonderful way to bring the year to an end!