Happy Monday friends! Boy do I have a great post for you today.

First things first though. The winner of the Strong and KIND bar giveaway is….

Becca! I used the Random Number Generator to pick the winner.  Congrats Becca!

Now on to the yummy, scrumptious, melt in your mouth stuff. Andy and I attended a Harvest Dinner last week at the Saugatuck Craft Butchery.

The Saugatuck Craft Butchery was founded three years ago in Westport, Connecticut by a husband and wife who were unsatisfied with food situation in the area.  It was way too hard to find good quality and local meat so they left their corporate jobs and opened up a food establishment to provide the community with grass fed, antibiotic and hormone free animal products. So cool.

Andy and I have been wanting to get to the butchery to check it out so when the opportunity arose to attend one of their eight course dinners, we jumped right on it!

This was such a cool experience and one of the best, most adventurous meals I have ever had!  We sat right up at the bar seats where we had an up close view of the chef, Emily, at work.  It was like a real live version of Top Chef!

The first course was a Persimmon and Fennel Salad.  Simple yet delicious.  It was a nice light start to the meal.  It was sprinkled with hazelnuts and fresh pecorino cheese drizzled with a nice citrus vinaigrette.

For course two we got a little bit adventurous with Smoked Beets and Beef Tongue!  The beef tongue was really good, very crispy, and to me had almost a calamari type of consistency (I may be way off there but I’m no food critic).  Smoking the beet was so different but worked really well.

For the third course we ventured into carb land for a Butternut Squash Papardelle.  This was one of my favorite courses.  Maybe because I never eat anything like this anymore but the creamy, butternut squash sauce was heaven.  The pasta was home made and paired with a sage sausage.  Out. of. this. world.

The fourth course gave us Roased Loin of Rabbit.  It was paired with a pear chestnut ragout and topped with a mustard glaze.  The rabbit was a similar texture to pork tenderloin.  I enjoyed it, and especially loved the cooked pear ragout!

The fifth course made me a little nervous when I read it but I ended up loving it!  Lamb Neck with Quince and Turnip.  The Lamb Neck was slow cooked and pulled which I wasn’t expecting.  The flavors were fantastic and I loved the turnip and quince (a pear like fruit) paired with it.

The climax of the meal put in front of us this beautiful and mouth watering Short Rib and Bayley Hagen Pie. Andy absolutely loved this course.  This pie gave us slow cooked short rib inside a dough that Emily told us she made with actual beef fat…very different.  There was also some cheese mixed in with the short rib.  It was ah-maze-ing!

For dessert number one, yes there were two.  We had an Autumn Crepe filled with a pumpkin and spiced maple cream topped with a cranberry compote.  Pretty much the epitome of fall.

And to top it all off we ended with a Black Bottom Oatmeal Tart which was topped with an apple chutney and salted caramel gelato.  Heaven in my mouth right there!

I forgot to mention that every single course was also paired with a glass of wine that complimented the flavors of the dish.

So obviously you guys can see that this meal was no joke.  I ate things I never thought I would and enjoyed every single course thoroughly.  Even Andy, who is a tad bit picky, ate everything!

If you live in the area I highly suggest checking out one of Saugatuck Craft Butchery’s seasonal dinners.  Their next one is in December.  I also hear that they have fantastic brunch which I will definitely be checking out soon!

Has anyone else every attended a dinner like this?