A five course Italian meal with a wine pairing? Sign me up!
On Saturday night, I joined a fun group of bloggers at Todd English’s Tuscany, an upscale restaurant located inside of Mohegan Sun in Connecticut.
(Top row: Caitlin, Theodora, me, Beth, Bianca; Bottom row: Elizabeth, Anne, Maria, Tina)
Michelle, the social media manager for Mohegan Sun, invited a group of nine bloggers to Tuscany to try a handful of the restaurant’s offerings, beginning with an antipasto course that included calamari, flatbreads, and antipasta della casa.
Of the three antipasto dishes, the antipasta della casa was my favorite, and I filled my plate with fresh mozzarella, marinated artichoke hearts, beets and olives. The artichoke hearts stole the show and I was happy to see them pop up again in the salad course.
For my salad, I opted for the Tuscan salad which included mixed greens, olives, roasted peppers and marinated artichokes tossed in a lemon vinaigrette.
The salad felt like a continuation of the antipasta della casa, which was find by me.
Our third course was a pasta course and I ordered linguini and clams tossed in garlic, olive oil and white wine.
The pasta was cooked al dente, which is just the way I like it, and I was please to see a decent portion of clams resting atop the linguini. I would have no qualms about ordering this dish again should I return to Tuscany in the future. It was one of my favorites of the evening.
After our pasta course was cleared, it was time for a little protein! I ordered the crispy skin salmon, served atop parmesan polenta with bacon-dijon Brussels sprouts and clams.
The salmon was pretty good, but the shining star of this course was the parmesan polenta. I couldn’t get enough!
Throughout the evening, each course was paired with a different kind of wine. Though I typically gravitate toward white wine, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the two reds we tried with our food. Without a doubt, my favorite wine of the evening was the Apothic red. It was so smooth!
The dessert course was paired with a dessert wine and included a fallen chocolate cake served with Tahitian vanilla ice cream and a raspberry puree.
I ate every last bite off my plate even though I was already quite full at this point. It was just too good!
I also sampled some of the treats from a platter of assorted cannolis, Italian cookies and biscotti.
I ate the creamy inside out of two cannolis and left the majority of the crispy exterior behind. The creamy center is where it’s at!
Our final night at Mohegan Sun was full of fantastic food, drinks and conversation. I laughed a lot (thank you, wine) and had such a fun time talking with everyone at dinner. Thank you to Michelle and Mohegan Sun for such a wonderful evening!
P.S. I will announce the winner of the Faded Days Sunglasses giveaway ASAP! For some reason the plugin that I installed that numbers comments isn’t working. Since I use a random number integer generator to select the winners and don’t want to risk miscounting the comments myself since there are a bunch, I’m going to pick a winner as soon as I can fix the plugin glitch!
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