DINNER IN THE BERKSHIRES

As i told you in my previous post, I spent the weekend in the Berkshires. No, not for some nice relaxing vacation. I had a booth at the Tanglewood Wine and Food Classic. So I was giving away free samples of chilled hot chocolate to some really wealthy folks. Good times. This did afford me the opportunity to explore the Berkshires for the first time, though, so I decided to spend that evening and the next day (my day off) checking it all out.

Before I left for my trip, I did some researching on where to eat. Lately, I've been a big fan of Chowhound, especially since they've revamped the site and made it much easier to search. I searched for places to eat in Lee and Lenox (we were staying in Lee) and found an interesting place called From Ketchup to Caviar. The people on Chowhound had given it pretty good reviews, but I was a little confused by their website. It was obviously a catering company, but they wrote nothing about the actual restaurant. After a little more digging online, I found an address for the place, but was a little skeptical about the lack of info on the actual website.

Fast foward to Saturday night. With address in hand, we went looking for the restaurant. And couldn't find it. I'd written down the phone number in case something like this happened, and when we called, found out that the restaurant was located across from the fire station. I knew where the fire station was, but there was no sign of a restaurant called "From Ketchup to Caviar." The only place we saw was one called Chez Nous. We were pretty hungry by this point, so we gave up and went to Chez Nous, a French bistro type place. (Turns out that From Ketchup to Caviar had closed and been replaced with Chez Nous at some point. So just call ahead if you do plan to use Chowhound and verify info).

I had wanted to sit outdoors, but the wait would've been 15 minutes. And like I said, we were hungry. The rest of the restaurant was booked, but in the bar area there were 3 small tables with stools, and we were seated there. It was a bit cramped and uncomfortable because we were perched on these hard stools. I think I was more ok than Tom, but looking at all the other diners, I don't think anyone was a fan of the stools.

We were quickly given bread, water and menus. It was pretty much your typical French bistro type fare. I decided to order 2 appetizers. Tom and I shared the crudite plate below.

It had a roast pepper sauce thingy, an olive tapenade and some chevre. My favorite was the cheese, though they gave us far too few pieces of bread and veggies, so we had to order extra.

For my "entree" (though it was the appetizer size portion) I ordered the crab cakes.

I must say it was a pretty generous portion for an appetizer size. And i was suprised that it even came with corn on the side. I did like the crab cakes. It wasn't too stuffed with filler, and they had put in lots of whole grain mustard to give it more flavor. A bit unusual, but not bad at all.

Tom ordered a steak, but he didn't seem to really like it. I think it was too fatty. Also by this point, service had become very spotty. I think they were too busy trying to take care of all the ppl in the main dining room. But dinner was dragging a bit by this point, and we were tired. So we opted to skip dessert.

Overall, it was a decent dinner. Better than going to Friendly's, but in the future, I think I'll drive the extra 10 minutes to Lenox, where there are more dining choices.