The Citizen Hotel unveiled its new restaurant about four months ago and has been a success since its opening. The theme of the restaurant is local, local, local. With morel mushrooms from Yosemite, pork from the Sacramento Valley, and produce from local farmers markets. Grange is fulfilling its commitment to the tenets of the slow food movement. We ate around 7:30 and the restaurant was pretty much full on a sunday.
We were in a comfort food kind of mood i guess because if there was starch on the menu, then we were ordering it. We got a frito misto of white fish, calamari, onions, caper, and lemons served with a caper aioli. It was pretty awesome. We also tried the tagliatelle, which was dressed with a delicious meyer lemon cream and tossed with crunchy fennel and crab meat. The pasta was a little tough, but the flavors were on point.
For our entrees, we had meat and....yup, you guessed it, more starch. I had the braised pork shank which was stuffed and rolled with house-made fennel sausage and served over creamy grits and roasted carrots. The dish was good, the braising jus was seasoned aggressively and the grits had just the right amount of toothiness. Mom had the zinfandel braised shortribs wth potato puree and gremolata. The short ribs were ridiculously tender and i can appreciate that because I have yet to perfect the art of braised short ribs. Mom had a gin and tonic with dinner and i had a bottle of Green Flash Brewing Co. West Coast IPA. The hoppy IPA was great with the creamy grits and pork, also the crispy frito misto, too.
Dessert: We had a chocolate cheese cake on top of a hazelnut-rice crispy wafer, caramel sauce, and bruled bananas. Chocolate Decadence with peanut butter anglaise, peanut dust, candied peanuts, maldon sea salt...both were equally delicious, equally rich, and more than enough to eat all at once, so we took them home and i'm sure mom and my aunt enjoyed them the following evening.
