May was a really busy month that saw us do 8 or 10 Chef's Tastings, multi-course dinners in which we cook the best of what we have on hand and can find and pair those dishes with great wines. These dinners are fun for both us and our customers and they really keep us thinking back in the kitchen, and force us to keep coming up with new dishes and ideas. Our June tasting calendar is really light. Maybe it's time for you to book a tasting with us?

We still have a few seats left for our 6th Annual Linden Wine Dinner, but you'll need to act very quickly to get one of the remaining seats.

On the food front, morels are finished, but porcini are coming on strong. Softshells are just coming into their own. Wild salmon will start to trickle onto the menu as prices come down. Strawberries are prime for the next couple of weeks, then early raspberries should start.

Thanks for all your support! I hope to see each of you in the dining room soon,

Ed Matthews
Chef and Owner

I invite you to taste Jim Law's latest releases from Linden Vineyards at our annual wine dinner on the 25th of June at 6:30pm. This dinner always sells out in a hurry (and we only have a few seats remaining after our pre-announcement to our One Block West Rewards members), so if you want to attend this dinner, call us today at 540-662-1455. You must guarantee your reservation with a credit card. The cost is $75 per person, not including taxes or gratuities.

We'll be serving the following wines paired to a menu that is still in development:
  2008 Avenius Sauvignon Blanc
  2006 Hardscrabble Chardonnay
  2006 Petit Verdot
  2006 Hardscrabble Red
  2005 Late Harvest Vidal

Sunday afternoon, the 14th of June, I'll be at Sunflower Cottage demonstrating Cooking with Herbs, the topic of my recent cookbook, during the Virginia Herb Festival. Sunflower Cottage is between Winchester and Front Royal off Reliance Road. I hope to start demonstrating about 1pm. Don't be late: I have to scoot to cook a fundraiser dinner that starts at 4pm.

I love cheese. As I sit writing this, I am nibbling on a slice of Cypress Grove's Humboldt Fog goat cheese. I've been a wholehearted supporter of the American farmstead cheese movement for years but I have found it very difficult to get customers to join me in my support by purchasing cheese. I am still persisting and have recently moved two cheese plates, called White Wine Cheese Plate and, you guessed it, Red Wine Cheese Plate, to the main menu. Sales have been steady.

Our current six farmstead cheeses are Mountain Top Blue, a goat cheese from Firefly Dairy in Western Maryland; Fennel Chèvre from the Vermont Butter Company; the aforementioned Humboldt Fog from northernmost California; and three Virginia cheeses to support the home team: Oak Spring Dairy Derby from Upperville; Meadow Creek Dairy Grayson from Galax; and Everona Dairy Stony Man from Rapidan (522 south of Culpeper). I've written about these cheeses on the blog in the article entitled Virginia Cheese.

The stall in sales of expensive bottles of wine because of the economy, coupled with my general boredom with our wine list, has caused me to re-evaluate the entire list as well as devise a new promotion to showcase fun wines that are really great values. This also gives me a way to promote wines that you should know and love, but probably would not normally order. Starting this week, as soon as all the wines on order arrive and are stocked, we're going to launch our "Seven at $7" promotion on our by-the-glass list. The seven featured wines will change over time. The first seven are:

• a delicious, lemony Spanish Cava
• a fruity and dry Argentine Malbec Rosé
• a light and crisp Friulano from Friuli (duh!) in northeast Italy
• a brilliant green apple-flavored Vinho Verde from Portugal
• an amazing dry Riesling with huge fruit from the Pfalz in Germany
• a light smoky Argentine Pinot Noir that could be Burgundy
• a joyful fruity Beaujolais Villages

The exercise of evaluating the entire list has caused me to rethink what I want from the list. First, the restaurant promotes local foodstuffs and so should the wine list. Over time and now that more and more Virginia wineries are regaining distribution after the fiasco caused by the Supreme Court's ruling in Granholm v. Heald, and now that more wineries are producing better products, I am going to restore the balance of Virginia wines back to its pre-Granholm level of about 50%.

Also, in looking at my food and menus, it is clear that my style is just not suited to huge blockbuster wines and Parkerized fruit bombs. I sense this daily in my struggle to pair food friendly wines with the menu, especially for red wine dishes. It is clear to me that Pinot Noir, the ultimate food friendly wine, is sorely underrepresented on the list as are other light reds. Look for the light red category to increase at the expense of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec, Norton, and so forth. Also look for more emphasis on high acid reds such as Nebbiolo and Sangiovese.

Finally, I will be guided by relative value in purchasing new wines for the list. I am afraid that this means that the days of Angelo Gaja's wines, of first growth Bordeaux, of Dom Pérignon, of Opus One and Phelps Insignia are limited. There are so many other wines that are a better value for you that deserve a shot on our list.

Not much time to blog this month, but here are the recipes I did get recorded:

• Cabernet Compound Butter, a go-to technique you should know.
• Rhubarb Shiraz Sauce, what to do with all that rhubarb.

Remember, you have a choice about what you eat. How about stopping by a local farmers market and picking up something really fresh for dinner? Each time you do that, you're getting food that is fresher and better for you, supporting the local economy, and helping out with the environment by eliminating long distance food transportation. More information: www.buylocalvirginia.org.