Accents is a medium sized long restaurant with about 12 bare wood tables and little wall adornment. They only opened 3 months ago, in Dec. of 2016. Some of the walls are exposed brick and the floor is concrete but the tables are spaced well enough that noise is not a problem. The chairs are comfortable and there is soft background “elevator” music. They serve a 6 course surprise tasting menu or this night they also have a 5 course truffle tasting. Wine pairings are available. The savory food seemed to try too hard – with lots of ingredients but sometimes under-seasoned – it didn’t really sing. However the pastry chef seemed to produce a better product. Service is good with friendly servers who spoke great English.
We chose the regular tasting and the wine pairings. For an appetizer they served a soft boiled egg with lemon chantilly cream and buckwheat caramel juice. The lightly cooked egg was served cool and tasted slightly sweet. It was a nice start.
A bread bag contained dark bread with a really crisp crust and good chew. It was served with butter mixed with sea herbs, espelette pepper and lemon. The bread was so strongly flavored that the butter taste was lost.
First course was asparagus with vichyssoise. The potato, leek cream was seasoned with white asparagus and adorned with watercress and egg white mousse. The asparagus was quite tasty but with all the ingredients I expected more than one dimension.
Crayfish was with lime cream, shrimp juice, broccoli, and sorrel. The crayfish was encased in a pasta. The broccoli floweret provided a bit of texture to the lightly cooked crayfish. There was a sweet component to the dish but one of them was enough, I didn’t crave more.
Pollock was served with a thin sheet of pork fat, mushrooms, onion, braised carrot, and dots of lemon. The fish was cooked properly but nothing here sang with flavor. Dull.
A lamb roll was stuffed with foie gras and mushroom and served with artichoke, salsify and lemon grass. The roll was herby and nice with a really good sauce. The artichokes were tasty but as a whole the dish didn’t come together, but it fared better than the previous ones.
The first dessert was white chocolate (in sheets) with white chocolate mousse, creamy lemon, pistachio and dried tangerine. It was sweet with nice fruit bits. It was pretty good.
Second dessert was dark chocolate with caramelized quince juice and caramel ice cream. It also had lots of ingredients but in this instance they blended well for a really good end result.
Last was chiffon cake made with egg, oil and milk and served with chestnut cream. It was mild but very nice.
