A Valentine's Day Leap of Faith
There’s magic on the menu at Lautrec, Nemacolin Woodlands Resort’s flagship restaurant.
Lautrec’s Leap of Faith menu changes daily based on fresh and local ingredients.
Lautrec, Nemacolin Woodlands Resort’s award winning restaurant, offers its renowned menu to every guest. For those with a sense of adventure, however, Chef Kristin Butterworth goes a step further – no: a leap further.
Her Leap of Faith menu arrives with a quill and inkpot, and a parchment filled with icons representing fresh, local ingredients. This romantically presented and ever-changing list might contain venison, trout, and wild quince one day, and mushrooms, duck and spiceberries the next. One constant: a mystery ingredient known only in the kitchen.
Once you lovebirds have circled the foods you crave, you are in the hands of Butterworth and crew. All you have to do is sit and wait with a wine chosen from the resort’s 1,200-bottle wine list. (With 21,000 bottles in its wine cellar, Nemacolin is home to Pennsylvania’s largest public wine collection.)
It takes just one taste of the first plate to know that the chef and her staff are worthy of your trust. Using their extensive training and their fine palates, each personally selected course will tingle the taste buds with one unique combination after another, always in perfect sequence. The momentum of the meal builds until the main course comes, and then the flavors and the scale of dishes diminishes to a relaxing and subtle finale.
Butterworth is confident that the pair who opts for the “Leap of Faith” menu will be duly rewarded. “It’s our style to offer up something like this for those who are up for an adventure, while having all the standard menu options for the other guests,” she says. “Whoever partakes in this menu will get a truly unique and customized experience.”
Lautrec will keep each night’s list a total surprise until the parchment is presented, but there’s nothing outlandish on the list and servers will inquire about dietary restrictions and allergies before delivering the list of selections to the kitchen.
Butterworth, who was born and raised in western Pennsylvania and received her culinary degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, worked at a variety of acclaimed resort restaurants throughout her career before returning to Pennsylvania to truly hone her craft.
She’s not aware of any other restaurants promoting a similar “Leap of Faith” experience, and Butterworth acknowledges that this improvisational concept challenges her culinary team in an exciting way. “It’s going to keep us on our toes, for sure,” she says. “But I think we’re up for it!”
Lovebirds: you will be too.
For more: nemacolin.com
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