Five-Star Dining? Yes? No? Maybe.

    For some reason neither Lorraine nor I are enamored by five-star dining. I suppose one reason is that Lorraine is a very good cook, so we really don’t have to go anyplace to get gourmet food. Second: we’re both sort of simple food people. Third: some of our fine-dining experiences haven’t turned out well. 
    A case in point in one experience we had just before we left Kentucky. Shauna and Kevin had sent us a gift for the Mansion, a five-star restaurant in Lexington, Kentucky. This is the place where our nephew and niece got married and had dinner afterward. It was excellent, so we were looking forward to eating there again. 
   The following is from my journal at the time. 
    Last evening Lorraine and I went to The Mansion for some dinner. This is a five-star place affiliated with the local Marriot and golf course complex. I should say it was a five-star place, but now it is a four-star place, and they are trying hard to get back that other star. The Christmas before last Shauna and Kevin gave us a gift card so we could go out and enjoy a nice dinner. 
    We were shown to our table and when asked about drinks I asked for a couple strawberry daiquiris, non-alcoholic of course. The waitress said they couldn’t do that, as they didn’t have a blender. Well, that explained the fifth star. We settled for tap water, so right from the start they knew what kind of discriminating diners they had on their hands.
    The next thing the waitress explained to us was that The Mansion had a new chef and that he specialized in only a few dishes, but that he did these exceedingly well. We had noticed that the menu was very short, about six salads, and about seven entrees. It sounded like a guy who only got part way through the Shawano School of Culinary Arts, because of his predilection for adding cheese toast to each of his dishes. (We could only hope.) 
   We each ordered a salad and an entree. I ordered the Salmon and Lorraine went for the Sea Bass. Except for the Kobe Beef those were the only two items that did not include pork in some form or another. Well, there was one whole Poulet (chicken to us lowlanders) a person could get, but the table next to us had one and it looked like a person would have to be well trained in doing a post-mortem necropsy to dissect and eat the thing. 
    So, we were all aflutter to see what this new chef would do with what we ordered. 
    Our salads came on large rectangular plates. This gave said chef the opportunity to make this salad layout a work of art. And it was. Mine was tomatoes, onions, horseradish, and some other stuff to help decorate the space. The flavors were very good together, and other than rounding up the salad from the four corners of this large plate, was enjoyed to the maximum. Lorraine’s salad was beets and some other stuff to make it possible to have it look like it should have been in the Louvre. The main claim to fame for this salad was that the beets were of several different colors. Whoopee! But then again what can you expect from beets. 
    Just about the time we were ready to plunge into our salads, the guy sitting at the next table about four feet away, blew his nose. Not some little stopping a drip with a tissue thing, but a major juicy, warbling blow out, that went on and on. I don’t want to even think about where all that mucus was coming from, but there was certainly an overabundance of it. 
    Between the salad and the entrée we got a small glass of lemon sorbet. I guess this was to cleanse our palettes, so we could fully appreciate what was to come. Maybe if we had used it on our palates it would have worked better. Just kidding. 
   Before the entree arrived so did four people to occupy the table on the other side of us. I’m not sure how long they had been waiting in the bar, but they were in a fine mood. Their talk and laughter was about 40 decibels above what was necessary. To talk to Lorraine, I had to put my mouth up to her ear. The waitress soon moved us into the next room where we were by ourselves. Speaking of being by ourselves---as we were leaving about 8:15, the place, or what I could see of it was maybe 1/10th full, or 90% empty. 
   The entrees came. Again, they looked very pretty. However, my salmon was soft and sort of mushy. I’m guessing it had been caught on its spawning grounds just before it rolled over on its back; knowing it had fulfilled its main mission in life. 
   Lorraine’s Sea Bass was not much better. The taste was not too bad, but the texture took most all the pleasure out of it. Now if I had gotten this from some cook at Denny’s and was paying $9.95 for it, I would have gone back and hit the guy over the head with the large rectangular plate, being sure that he was having some kind of joke at my expense.
    But at the Mansion, where I was paying $35.00 for just this entree, I accepted it without a murmur, at least not much, and just assumed that the fault was with me and not this wanabe five-star chef. Funny how that works. Well, $66.00 dollars and our $50.00 gift card lighter, we went home. I’m not sure I could ever talk Lorraine into going back to the place. And I don’t know why I would try.