Wine & Mexican

Like most other city, January is home to restaurant week in Baton Rouge. The boy and I have never taken part, mainly because I never hear about it till after it's over. This year though we had warning and made a point to make it happen.

I went through the list of restaurants looking for a new place to try where we'd both have options that amused us. The choice we made was Bin 77, which technically was new to both of us, although I had been there before under a different name.

It's actually more of a wine bar, but they decided to take a bit of a Mexican twists on their restaurant week. So while we did have the restaurant's food, it wasn't the wine and appetizers that you'd normally have while there.

The boy and I both had the braised rabbit and duck carnitas. They came stuffed with foie gras, chestnut-thickened green mole, spiced quince, roasted broccolin, and duck skin cracklin. The main reason I order this was because it came with foie gras, but while it was really good, you couldn't really taste the foie gras, which was a bit of a disappointment.
For my main dish I went with adobe crusted ahi tuna with wilted saffron endive, creamy masa, baby bok choy, smoked corn & anchovy sofrito. Again, the tuna was good, but not amazing. But far the better part of this dish was all the vegetables underneath.
The boy's choice, which you can see in the back, was a lava rock aged New York strip with short rib and manzanilla olive rillette, chanterelle-oxtail rellenas & celery root chuleta. Again with his dish the best part was the sides, and looking back I think I would have preferred his steak to my fish.
Since the boy isn't a fan of desserts, I was able to enjoy both of the options offered. Above was their chocolate plantain bread pudding with candied walnuts, raw honey comb, saffron simple syrup & cinnamon-rum whipped cream. In the photo below was a slice of dos leches cake with goat cheese & cranberry jam, blood orange gel & pistachio gelato. Unfortunately though, I wasn't a huge fan of either item. Both were good, and there were items that I loved, especially the gelato, but neither was one I'd see myself ordering again.
Looking back, I made it sound as if it was a disappointing night. Except it wasn't really. We probably did go into this with high expectations, and there were a lot of aspects that we really liked. But next time we go back we'll probably stick to wine and appetizers, and next year again we'll likely want to try out someplace new for restaurant week.

Do you have restaurant week where you live? If so, have you ever taken part?