Weddingbee Blog

Yes, everyone! It’s time to talk food. While I have not talked about food very much in my blogging, I am somewhat of a foodie. I keep a running list of restaurants for me and Mr. Swan to try and read about food and chefs for fun. I’ve also been known to spend too much time looking for the right spice for a new recipe. Needless to say, I was pretty excited for our tasting at Battery Gardens.

We had a perfect early evening in June right on the water in Battery Park.

Here’s Mr. Swan looking over our cocktail hour hors d’oeuvres options and cheesing it up for the camera.

Mommy Swan got to come, too! I was excited to see her.

As with most meals we started out with a salad at the beginning.

Below is the frissee salad with blue cheese, poached pears, slivered almonds and orange-lemon vinaigrette. My personal favorite.

I’m sorry that you don’t get to see much of the presentation in this and many of the other pictures. I got so excited about eating that I did that first before taking pictures. Oops!

The arugula salad which had melon, pine nuts, some goat cheese and rhubarb vinaigrette.

We ended up picking the frissee salad. Mr. Swan was favoring the arugula, but my thinking is that not everyone likes the bitterness of arugula. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Then we moved on to the main courses. Mr. Swan has something against what he calls “Wedding Chicken”. It’s from all of his days serving as a teenage DJ for weddings and eating a lot of stuffed chicken. That being said, I let Mr. Swan take the lead on choosing the meat option.

Our choices:

Filet mignon with porcini peppercorn sauce, a vegetable melange (which was essentially different kinds of potatoes) and grilled asparagus.

(Again I got too happy about the food before taking a pic. Sorry for the pic of half-eaten food!)

I actually liked this as someone who is a non-meat eater, and the asparagus was GREAT! I loves me some grilled asparagus. The filet was juicy and well-seasoned, the asparagus was crisp and the potatoes tasted wonderful.

The other beef option we chose to taste was a braised beef with a side of mashed potatoes, a warm bean salad which looked more like haricot vert to me, and almonds. Mr. Swan raved about this but thought that our guests would prefer the filet mignon.

On to the fish, and my domain. I started with the red snapper with a ginger crust, braised Asian vegetables and cardamom rice. Um, the rice was the bomb diggity… it was fragrant, perfectly cooked and was a lovely complement to the vegetables. I thought the snapper was fine. I am not a huge fan of crusted fish, but this wasn’t bad at all.

Finally for the fish dishes, there was the salmon with a wasabi crust, soba noodles and tofu. While I will eat tofu anytime, anywhere, I know that it’s not really the food of choice for many people.

BUT… the salmon was so good that we couldn’t pass it up. It was perfectly cooked. We’ll be having the salmon with the rice and the vegetables that came with the snapper.

There’s also going to be vegetarian option, but we didn’t get a chance to taste that. The type A in me is just not going to worry.

Finally, dessert (the best part, of course)!

Coconut Passion Fruit Mousse

At least it’s something you don’t get all the time.

I did think about the chocolate mousseas an option, but we decided to pass. It was VERY good, and I’m not a major chocoholic.

Of course we could have gone with the classic and always refreshing sorbet. We loved the presentation!

I was amazed that me, Mr. Swan, and Mommy Swan all agreed that we liked the coconut passion fruit mousse. Talk about three different palates in harmony.

Of course, a tasting is much different than mass-produced food, but we feel pretty comfortable that we’ll be serving our guests a nice meal and they won’t be starving.

How was your tasting for the wedding? Was it easy to make the final menu choices? Did you consider what you liked best, or what you thought your guests would like best?