Tasty Tasty

This past weekend we had our official tasting at our venue. And, of course, not only did we get to try the food, but we decided on our menu. As I've mentioned before, our venue is a historic plantation, and besides hosting events (like weddings) a lot of their income comes from tours of the home as well as the surrounding gardens. But on top of that there's also a restaurant. I've been there before for brunch, and since our tasting was on a Sunday morning (or afternoon depending on your definition of morning) we were eating in the restaurant along with our wedding planner (or DOC whatever you want to call her). But let's get to the food!

These are all the appetizers we tasted, and while it isn't everything available it does include enough options to give you a feel for the ones we didn't taste. (At least that's what we were told.)
Starting from the left we have jumbo lump crabcake canapes with chipotle remoulade sauce, beef wellingtons (fillet of beef wrapped in mushroom duxelle and puff pastry), chicken satay with honey creole mustard dipping sauce (these are ones on sticks near the back and the only dipping sauce you see), jumbo Louisiana shrimp wrapped with apple smoked bacon, sesame seared tuna with wasabi aioli, and finally spicy poached gulf shrimp served atop roma tomato, herb cream cheese and fresh basil.

Yes, that's a lot of writing, and it's hard to see them all, but I do have close-ups of almost every option in case you're dying to see more. The only one I don't have a close-up image of is the spicy poached shrimp, which I'm guessing is because I only at the shrimp and gave the boy my cream cheese filled pastry cup. I guess in my hurry to get the cream cheese away from me, I forgot about pictures.

For our choices, we'll start with the ones we didn't get to try. I said we had to have their phyllo pastries stuffed with spinach and feta, because I'm obsessed with feta. Plus it also gave us at least one vegetarian option. The boy insisted on prosciutto wrapped goat cheese lollipops for a similar reason. (Minus of course the vegetarian bit.) And since I thought it was fun, the lollipop stick is actually a pretzel so it's 100% edible.
We then went with the bacon wrapped shrimp, which isn't the prettiest of options, but it tasted really good.
Our final choice was the seared tuna, which was probably everyone's favorite. And it doesn't hurt that it's the prettiest one as well.

At that point our waitress happened to walk by with a bread basket, and coordinator told her that since this was our tasting we didn't need any bread, unless of course any one wanted any. I think from the photo below you can guess what happened, and I'd like to point out that bread didn't move from the boy's side for the rest of the meal.
From there we moved to the soup course, which on the day of the wedding will actually be first. The way it normally works is after the ceremony the guests would walk through the house and on their way to the reception would each be handed a small cup of soup. The options we had were chicken & andouille gumbo on the left and bisque of curried pumpkin, crawfish, & corn on the right.
These were both actually really good, and I'm pretty sure when I went to brunch with my parents my mom had the bisque for an appetizer and the gumbo for her main dish, so I've tried them both before. My personal favorite was the bisque, but I think that for a lot of my family and friends being in Louisiana for the first time, gumbo made more sense. And just because I liked the bisque better didn't mean I didn't like the gumbo. The boy was actually disappointed that I finished all my gumbo, since he wanted to have another serving.

I did want to mention that I was a little concerned with how a hot soup would go over on a hot day, but was told that they do this all the time, even on the hottest days and people still take the soup. The thought was that since it's really only a tasting, it isn't too extreme.
But finally to the main course starting at 12 o'clock on the plate and moving clockwise, we have Louisiana seafood pasta (crawfish and shrimp swimming in Creole tomato cream and tossed with penne pasta), crispy fried catfish fingers with tartar suce, grilled breast of chicken with saffron and tasso butter sauce, roasted breast of duck drizzled with praline sauce, and crawfish etouffee served over flakey pastry sauce.

Again starting with the choices we didn't get served, we'll have sliced roast prime rib with rolls and condiments for sandwiches, creamed potatoes, a vegetable medley, and a fruit and vegetable display. We also asked for jambalay, which isn't actually one of their official options. But when we started looking into venues, the boy said his only requirement was that they would serve jambalaya. So while jambalaya isn't on their official menu, we will be having it served. They're also going to change the seafood pasta into a vegetable pasta giving us a vegetarian option.

Finally we'll be serving the duck. This was easily mine and the boy's favorite out of all the main course options we got to try. Granted I'm a big fan of duck in general (and it reminds me of my grandfather since he used to always order it at restaurants) but even so, the duck along with the sauce was just really good.

Now that I've written a novel about food (but would you really expect any less from me?), I'll finally bring this post to an end. But if you had to pick from these options, which ones do you think you'd choose?