Mountain View Brasserie #14 – February 2020 (dt)
7.66 – 8, 8, 7.8, 7.75, 7.5, 7.5, 7.5, 7.25

Close-to-home, support-local meant, of course, Mountain View Brasserie.

So, how does MVB do this? Seamless excellence that begins to look ordinary, that is.

A review of our fourteen visits over a dozen years would probably reveal a steady menu. However, the specials add enough variety to often lure the adventuresome away from the main menu.

Choice of salad or soup was included, a setup we like if the salad is a good basic. Manhatten clam chowder (Joyce, Lynda) was deemed worthy. The other six found the salad, or its Caesar alternative, to be a competent and worthy starter, with the house dressing a good go-to.

Entrées included:

• Special: Grilled 14 oz Black Angus Strip Steak Topped with a Portobello, Stilton Blue Cheese & Merlot Wine Sauce (Chay)
• Special: Butternut Squash Risotto with Roasted Sea Scallops (Deb T, Lynda)
• Maryland Crab Cakes with Lobster Sauce (Joyce)
• Sautéed Wiener Schnitzel with Spaetzle (Don, Ross, Deb K)
• Sautéed Sea Scallops served with Wilted Spinach and Bacon Sherry Vinaigrette (Mark)

            All were deemed excellent to very good. A couple of us are not particular veal consumers but the spaetzli lured us this time. (Ross, I think, has never ordered anything but this choice.)

Dessert included a few from the regular menu:

• Key Lime Pie (Deb T)
• Grand Marnier Chocolate Mousse with Fresh Orange Sections and Strawberries (Don, Ross)
• Black Sambuca (Chay)

A bottle of a Washington red blend for the three wine drinkers was a good accompaniment, with water and sodas filling the rest.

Ambiance, of course, is the same, and just as comfortable. White fabric shades as a centerpiece accompanying a white lace table cover feels elegant. Other elements of ambiance can be gleaned from past write-ups.

Service by Laura was excellent. We could not think of better recent service.

Pacing was comfortable for 110 minutes, with spacing between courses just right for us. A final bill for $100 per couple felt worth it, and off we departed into the February darkness and a forecast of a couple interesting days of weather ahead.

Again, we quietly admired the quality dining experience at several points along the way, and the scores show it, with an all-time top five.

Topics of the evening was topped by the likely sale of the Brasserie. Very mixed feelings from all of us. We wish well to those people who want to get on with the next stage of life. We hope the new owners can meet expectations and past performance, a tall order indeed.
            One of the interesting twists to the new owner story, assuming that the sale proceeds to a closing, is that one of them, the manager, is the son-in-law of Ron Teator. You might have heard a plop of a jaw on a table when the Freehold Teators heard that for the first time.
            And it appears that the staff who wants to stay will stay on. Barbara will assume the role that Terry has done for years. And even Chef Max appears to be holding on for a short while. Barbara said she had met Val, is excited and nervous, and is anticipating more success at MVB.
            A second big story of the night was a flipped house. We toasted Mark and his brother who are now the past owners of the Catskill house they were renovating. Mark bemoaned the poor market for reasonable available houses for his next improvement-for-the-world.
            On to other topics: our winter weather since Christmas has been spectacularly even-keel and moderate, with Albany having its sixth warmest January on record, and only several inches of snow; the forecast coming up (as it turned out, an inch of gloppy slush that eventually froze over); comparing notes about our other DP8ers and FB sightings of the Monteverds; books we are reading; a somewhat prolonged discussion of the history of the Bible and its treatment of Mary Magdalene (maybe we made up for last month); the Notars leaving the next day for Florida and other places for over a month; Lynda’s un-hip replacement (to be re-scheduled); Valentine’s Day coming; Chay and Deb’s trip to Florida with his HS group which included wives this time; cookie orders; Coronavirus and stranded passengers; the Adamses soon heading to NZ (Happy early 50^th); Mahjong; scrapbooking; a trip to Egypt coming up; poor plowing performance on Greenville town roads, and more that oozed through the sieve that is my memory.