THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED Verbena Awards

THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED Verbena Restaurant Review:

High-ceilinged, neo-elegant Verbena shines in a neighborhood that boasts as many fine dining hot-spots as others boast bus stops. Salvaged-wood tables, a lofty dark-walled mezzanine dining room and a weathered-brick wall above the bar mirror the flair for innovative sustainability that makes Verbena's fare --- especially its all-vegetable plates --- artful in concept, taste and design. Past dishes have included carrots basking in smoked-cashew sauce, beets in hazelnut curds, beef rib in the ancient Roman fish sauce known as garum, and frisée in pumpkin-seed milk. The snowy chèvre topping sprouted-seed bread bears an intense, magenta-velvet dust that turns out to be house-made, house-dehydrated beet slaw. Desserts such as sesame-meringue strawberry cheesecake are appropriately produce-forward. Primeval and twenty-first-century technologies maximize simple, seasonal, local ingredients, most grown on one farm especially for Verbena. International wines, local beers and creative cocktails (consider the Gilded Lily: apple scotch, vermouth, cardamom and ale) balance memorable dishes. Note: The executive chef is now Ryan Shelton.