Room 39

This “Seasonal American” restaurant, as described on their website, shows pride in using local ingredients to provide the best flavors on your plate. I have to agree with them, loved pretty much everything I had.

Mr. Mather and I celebrated our birthdays here with the 4 course meal they recommend for first timers. You get soup or salad, one half appetizer, one half entree and one half dessert. My husband opted for soup and salad and skipped dessert (knowing Paciugo would be on our way home, of course). How to even begin to describe the food.

I got a few spoons of the curry vegetable soup Chris ordered, I regretted not ordering one for myself. So flavorful and colorful, very welcoming.

Between my salad and his salad, it is a tie. He had the grilled romaine, beat, and blue cheese salad and I had the grapefruit and lobster with arugula. I hadn't tried grilled romaine before, I was happily surprised; the smoky flavor mixed with blue cheese was a perfect combination, and the shavings of semi-cooked beat added lots of texture. I have to say that this salad is on the heavy side though, all the blue cheese makes it rich and filling. Mine was all the opposite. A few pieces of grapefruit on top of earthy/peppery arugula was a total hit, and the lobster portion was very refreshing also, it was shredded very finely to almost form a sort of paste, but not really. Very fresh and light.

The appetizers: gnocchi and cheese plate. My gnocchi looked sauteed, more on the rustic side but still elegant. Big chunks of onions and mushrooms accompanied it. Really good. What about the cheese plate? Well, it is cheese people, it was wonderful of course. Three different types of cheese were served with three different jams/dips. 

I am glad Chris is getting connected with the cheese/jam concept, it has been in the making for a while; this concept is very known in Ecuador (at least in my house) and I have tried to convince him of its awesomeness for quite some time. His refusal to try it wasn't all his fault though, his first experience was brought to him by my very own father who provided him with a latin-man-out-of-women-to-cook-for-him cheese and jam sandwich. My dad doesn't know how to cook even less how to present it. His sandwiches have a one inch (at least) piece of cheese with lots of jam almost squirting out of the bread, needless to say the presentation never invites you to try it, but once you do it is great, and now he likes this pair.

Back to our meal. My main course was this colorful plate of beat ravioli (beat seemed to be the vegetable of the day) filled with cheese and 2-3 types of mushrooms on the side (center, actually). The ravioli was almost sweet-but not quite. Delicious. Very large portion though. Chris went for the lamb, and his words were “best lamb I have ever had in my life”. I am not too much of a meat eater but I have to agree that it was very good. Nice texture, perfect amount of red in the center, and beautiful to look at. His dish had brussel sprouts and other greens, and his only complaint was that it wasn't never-ending.

For dessert we shared the goat cheese beignet (sorry, forgot to take a picture of this one). Too sweet for me, this was the part I didn't care for too much. I guess this chef is known for his beignets so I still recommend trying them. But as I mentioned before, Paciugo was in our way home, so we stopped by and sinned of gluttony trying to make room for some gelato.

My thoughts after the experience? I would go back.