With the craziness of the holidays behind us, my wife and I had some much needed time off recently so we made sure to utilize this time wisely to sample local cuisine. It was with that in mind that my wife and I finally decided to visit Cotton for our first review of 2014. We had planned to visit over the last couple of months but the timing never seemed to work out. Finally on a recent Saturday night we got our chance.
The hostess took us to one of their many half booths in the front. I am not a fan of this type of seating arrangement always feeling like I'm intruding on the person at the next table. That said they were extremely busy in both the dining area and the bar.
Our waitress came by and my wife ordered a pomegranate martini which she enjoyed. At the same time she dropped off some of their delicious homemade sour dough bread that we gulped down with enthusiasm.
Next, we had the difficult task of trying to figure out what to order from the appetizer section since there were several we wanted to try. So, we enlisted our waitress for assistance and her favorite appetizer was the baked goat cheese. We will have to select the crab cakes next time since we went ahead with her suggestion.
As you can see this was a beautiful presentation with the tomato sauce and the melted cheese and it tasted as good as it looks.
We were also in the mood for a salad and there are a number of options including wedge, Caesar, mesclun, farmhouse and spinach. Our selection was the farmhouse:
We split this and were glad that we did. This was large enough to be an entree and I was surprised at how good it was. Don't think of this as your small little garden salad, it is so much more with hunks of mild cheddar cheese, bacon, romaine lettuce, onions and cherry tomatoes covered in a buttermilk dressing. By adding one of their salad "enhancements" you can make this a meal.
Moving on to the entrees, Chef Jeffrey Paige decided to go with a smaller number of items but he does cover a lot of ground. You can get anything from meatloaf and turkey Schnitzel to Jambalaya, grilled salmon, lamb, pork or sea scallops, ravioli's and steaks.
My choice was one of their specials, pork marsala:
This was a grilled pork chop with sea salt fingerling potatoes and grilled asparagus. I don't normally order specials but I was in the mood for pork and this did not disappoint.
My better half went with the Bistro Steak:
This was a flat iron steak with bacon bleu cheese butter served with mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus. The butter was a delicious addition to the meat and it was very good. Unfortunately she couldn’t finish her whole meal so the leftovers were enjoyed the next day.
For dessert, we shared their sea salt caramel gelato.
Because my wife is a sucker for all things sea salt caramel, she had high hopes but this wasn’t very good. This wasn’t worth the $7.00.
Our waitress made sure that everything was timed perfectly including keeping my water glass full and that is always appreciated.
I have to admit that our experience at Cotton was a lot better than I thought it would be and got our new year off to a great start. The prices on the entrees that ranged from $16 to $28 were very reasonable. The service was outstanding and the food exceeded my expectations.
