Who’s behind it: Celebrated chef John Fraser—best known for veggie-forward, Mediterranean-inspired dishes—has arrived in Boston with beef on his mind at the newly opened Vermilion Club. Fraser’s collection of Wine Spectator Restaurant Award winners spans the country, from Ardor in Los Angeles to North Fork Table and Inn on New York’s Long Island. Vermilion Club is the first Beantown restaurant from Fraser and his JF Restaurants group.
The location: The new chop house is a focal point of Winthrop Center, a residential and commercial skyscraper in Boston’s Financial District, completed in late 2023. On the ground floor, Fraser has taken the reins of the Lineup, Winthrop Center’s food hall featuring a coffee shop and bakery, a burger joint, a pizzeria and a mini, mezze-only, fast-casual version of Best of Award of Excellence winner Iris in New York.
When it opened: June 11, 2024
[article-img-container][src=2024-08/turning-tables-vermilion-club-interior-080824-1600.jpg] [credit= (Nitzan Keynan)] [alt= The dining room and bar of Vermilion Club, with a red glass Dale Chihuly sculpture floating above][end: article-img-container]The culinary approach: At Vermilion Club, Fraser is embracing steak-house fare, with his own Italian American touches. Diners can start with Fraser’s robust raw bar program and seafood snacks like chilled lobster cocktail with crème frâiche, steamed PEI mussels with pink peppercorn butter, and broiled clams topped with oregano-laced breadcrumbs. Staple steak-house appetizers and side dishes get twists, including the “Bourdain-style” beef tartare accented with Cognac and the tower of Caesar salad served with everything bagel crumble and mustard-marinated anchovies.
For the main event, Fraser has curated a selection of cuts from Idaho’s Snake River Farms and Kansas’ Creekstone Farms, ranging from an 8-ounce “butcher steak” to a 36-ounce prime porterhouse. All steaks can be prepped three ways: natural, Montreal spiced or “smothered.” Other entrees include roasted Dover sole with a beet-pineapple relish, a half-chicken with hazelnut romesco and the veal chop “pizzaiola,” topped like a pizza with mozzarella, marinara and coins of spicy soppressata. Guests wanting to up the ante on a decadent evening can look to the “Splurge” section, which features a foie gras “Boston cream pie” and snow-aged Wagyu.
The cocktail program: “We started this project dreaming big thoughts like ‘What if we had this binder full of all of the best cocktails?’” said JF Restaurants beverage director Amy Racine. “We then designed it after a Betty Crocker cookbook, with tabs, because of how large it became.”
More than 70 classic cocktails and variations fill the drinks menu, with a wide selection of little-seen sips like “the Japanese cocktail,” made with Cognac, amaretto and bitters, and the Clover Club, made with the Botanist gin, dry vermouth, raspberry and lemon. The menu is organized by base alcohol, from vodka drinks to wine and beer cocktails.
“Each category should feel like its own menu; so beyond the diversity in flavor profile or style, we wanted to have some fun with the recognizable versus the forgotten,” said Racine. “I’d like each guest to read each page and recognize most of the cocktails; then we sprinkled in a few twists to those or a few cocktails we found buried in old dusty cocktail books they may have never heard of.”
[article-img-container][src=2024-08/turning-tables-vermilion-club-amy-racine-080824_1600.jpg] [credit= (Nitzan Keynan)] [alt= Beverage director Amy Racine pouring a drink at Vermilion Club in Boston.][end: article-img-container]What’s on the wine list: Racine’s goal was to build a…
Source : https://www.winespectator.com/articles/restaurant-news-john-fraser-vermilion-club-jean-georges-vongerichten-bellagio
