Plate to Plate

When she approached our table on Saturday night, the waitress at the Remington Lodge regarded with raised eyebrows the completely empty pickle plate we left in the center of the table.

“Well, you sure did like those pickles,” she observed. “Would you like some more?” Like those pickles? Like them? I wanted to carry them off into the sunset, whisper sweet nothing in their ears, and marry them.

(Yes, pickles have ears.)

Reader, it took nearly all the willpower I could summon to say no. I had to leave room for biscuits, stew, and pie, afterall. Stupid me, I forgot to ask what, exactly, each pickle was, but I’ll try to describe them here anyway. There was a zingy carrot slice pickle, touched with sesame oil and sprinkled with toasted white sesame seeds; there was a spicy, crisp cabbage kimchee-like pickle (but it seemed less fermented, or more fresh, or something); there was a sweet and aromatic beet pickle; and somewhere in that mix were slivers of pickled jalepeño. It was heavenly. Dan and I nearly fought over who would get to lick the pickle juice from the plate. (In the end, we decided to refrain.)

The rest of dinner was a warm, savory compliment to those bright, piquant pickles: homemade buttermilk biscuits with homemade butter made from Sidehill Farm milk; a delicately dressed salad of young greens (also from Sidehill) tossed with bits of cashew; and a rich and almost imperceptibly sweet pork stew with chestnuts, made with pork from Holiday Farm in Dalton.

Yes, a pork stew. I even ate some of it. It was delicious.

For dessert, there was homemade apple pie with vanilla ice cream — the apples were soft and almost totally unstructured, with a delicate pinkish tint, and the crust was crisp and sweet. It was perfectly suited to a big mug of hot coffee and cream.

All this for a totally reasonable twenty-five bucks, plus it’s BYO. I love the Remington Lodge, but I really, really love those pickles.