Kensington’s in The Spa at Norwich Inn
cuisine: Contemporary American/Spa Food
entrées: $19 – $42
address: 607 West Thames Street, Norwich
phone: (860) 886-2401
credit cards: All major
4 1/2 Stars… Special
Kensington’s in The Spa at Norwich Inn is by no means a new restaurant, but it merits a critical visit at this time for a number of reasons. First, Kensington’s is one of the most significant restaurants east of the Connecticut River and we want our website reviews to be thoroughly representative of the entire state. Second, because of its setting in a spa, where privacy and quiet are prized, and because of its location in a quieter corner of the state, the restaurant has always flown a little below the radar. Third, even accounting for these factors, Kensington’s hasn’t seemed to be getting its due lately. It wasn’t even included in the most recent Zagat Survey, when it should fall somewhere in its upper echelons.
Although Kensington’s hasn’t been getting all of the attention it deserves, it remains an important cog in an impressive operation. The spa employees hundreds, its clientele tends to be several income brackets above mine, and for the last twelve years or so it has been run by the Mashantucket Pequots. Its ownership is particularly ironic because, from the front steps of the handsome spa, one gains an impressive view of the towering Mohegan Sun Casino.
Once inside the spa, it feels as if one has entered a land where time is immaterial. As one continues down a long corridor to the restaurant, one overlooks immaculately groomed grounds and intriguing structures that undoubtedly hold entire other worlds of self-improvement, relaxation and pleasure. If only I had been smart enough to review both the restaurant and the spa’s other amenities…
But a fine dinner at Kensington’s hardly qualifies as deprivation. The dining room’s opulent tone is set by a wall-length mural of a long table spilling over with fruit and flower baskets. Cascade curtains hang above the windows. A big chandelier with dangling crystals dominates the room, while several twin lamps jut from the wood-paneled walls. Thick carpeting holds sound to a minimum.
We looked around at the other diners. A woman at a table near us was dining solo—she told us that every year she comes here all of the way from New Jersey to “get away.” When you live in Connecticut, you don’t think of it as “away”—but others apparently do. We saw a couple of women gossiping quietly, the toned bare arm of one gleaming in the light. There were other pairs, but the most intriguing was a confident, well-dressed black fellow sitting opposite an equally refined Asian dining companion. Now there’s a man who knows how to treat a woman, we couldn’t help thinking.
Kensington’s is a spa restaurant and a greater number of its clients do seem to be women, but you can dismiss any preconceived notions of overly precious food. The food isn’t just for spritely waifs—“real men” will like it, too. Heck, I’m one. Executive chef Daniel Chong-Jimenez, in my eyes one of Connecticut’s better chefs, has put together a “powerful nourishment” menu that emphasizes antioxidants, avoids processed ingredients and avails itself of seasonal local organic foods. Calorie, fat, protein and carbohydrate counts are furnished for every dish—if one cares about such things. I don’t. I’m probably happier not knowing.
Extended introductory presentations by waitstaff are becoming an increasing trend of late, spawned probably by chain restaurants like Morton’s Steakhouse and P.F. Chang’s China Bistro. Kensington’s, of course, is anything but chain-like. However, our knowledgeable waiter, Jim Kaminski, went over the menu with us in fine detail, including explaining the specials, offering to facilitate food and wine pairings, and informing us that the waitstaff sample everything on the menu. The chef’s signature, we learned, is his bundled vegetables, and most sauces are on the plate and not atop the food. Certain dishes were described right down to the edible dendrobium orchids that garnish them.
Kensington’s sports an impressive wine list ($20-$550), including 35 wines by the glass ($6-$65), thanks to a wine preservation system. So many restaurants talk a good game about supporting local growers and buying local products, but then conveniently seem to forget that Connecticut wineries fall full square into these categories. Kensington’s deserves major kudos for putting its money where its mouth is. Most restaurants don’t even offer a token Connecticut wine or two, but Kensington’s has a full page of offerings, with multiple vintages from Priam Vineyards, Sharpe Hill Vineyard, Taylor Brook Winery, Jonathan Edwards Winery and Stonington Vineyards.
Another feature of the wine list that we appreciated was its 18 half-bottles ($18-$145). With only two drinkers in our party of three, and one not much of a drinker at that, the half-bottles gave us the flexibility, like a person forgetting to use sunscreen, to start white and turn red. We led off with a dry, floral, 2006 Louis Latour Pouilly-Fuissé, France ($29 for half bottle), then eased into a food-friendly 2005 King Estate Pinot Noir, Oregon ($32 for half-bottle). We nibbled housemade bread (sourdough, French baguette or multigrain bread may be served) with a trio of “tapénades” in roasted red pepper, roasted eggplant and roasted mushroom flavors.
Our first round of food was a taste of all three of Kensington’s soups, and here, something less than perfection was achieved. A New England clam chowder ($7) was creamy and rich but a little thicker than ideal, and I encountered a tiny bit of grit from the clam. A southwest bean soup ($6) was livelier and chili-flavored, but nothing out of the ordinary. And even the lovely maple-roasted butternut squash and pecan bisque ($7) topped with “sweet potato hay,” the signature soup over which I’ve lavished praise in the past, was a bit overly sweet this time around. But the soup course turned out to be a brief hiccup, a first-frame split before a succession of strikes that bowled the three of us over.
The rest of our meal was nothing short of amazing. Kensington’s amaretto shrimp ($14) showcased three jumbo beauties that were quickly blanched, tossed in a sweet and spicy amaretto emulsion, finished with crumbled walnut and garnished with purple dendrobium petals. If I had to put together a list of the ten best dishes in the state, an impossible task, I would have little choice but to include the sophisticated amaretto shrimp.
But other dishes excelled as well. One of the best was an onion and cheese flatbread ($9), which was cut into four pizza-like slices. A beautifully balanced creation, the honey-whole-wheat-and-flax cracker was topped with slices of green olive, Bermuda onion and Bridgid’s Abbey cheese from Cato Corner Farm in Colchester, and then drizzled with a blueberry-balsamic glaze. Somewhat along the same lines was a baked portobello mushroom ($9), which was served over a bed of greens and crusted with chèvre, roasted garlic and roasted shallot, and finally garnished with crispy pepitas (toasted pumpkin seeds), organic olive oil and Cabernet syrup.
Kensington’s lobster tortellini ($12) may have been misnamed. We were presented with one large filled square in a veal demi-glace resting on a bed of jícama. Italian pasta designations can be fairly fluid, but tortellini refer either to small ravioli-like squares (see Bissell, The Book of Food) or to small, cappelletti-like twists (see Bissel and Herbst, The Food Lover’s Companion). Maybe tortelloni, which would describe larger versions of either of the aforementioned, was what was intended, but even then, perhaps because it seemed to have been fried, the wonton-like wrapper tasted more like Chinese than Italian pasta. Many chefs take poetic license with their descriptions. While I don’t regard this as a huge problem, it can lead to dissatisfaction when a customer anticipates one thing but receives another. In this case, once the customer bit into the delicious wrapper filled with lobster meat, Manchego cheese, chervil, parsley and lemon zest, my guess is he or she would be too busy exclaiming over its great taste to flag down a waitperson and complain.
We were also quite taken with an appetizer special of bacon-wrapped jumbo scallop ($12) served in a maple butter glaze over an apple cider risotto. A sign of a great chef, the dish was perfectly in tune, the thick, rich bacon harmonized by the lovely sauce and fruit-tinged risotto.
Our meal was gaining the momentum of a runaway train, a rushing crescendo of delights sweeping away doubts and detractors in its wake. I would have thought the appetizers difficult to surpass, but surpass them the entrées did. What could possibly compare with the beauty, the delicacy and the balance of the amaretto shrimp? Well, how about a lobster purse ($35), a crêpe filled with a lobster tail from which slender stalks of asparagus emerged like the legs of a hermit crab leaving its shell? Outside the crêpe, a second lobster tail and two claws lurked, along with pattypan squash and a sumptuous lobster-and-Chardonnay reduction dotted with three pools of saffron sauce and red tobiko. Extraordinary!
I love good swordfish ($29), but all too often it can be too firm or too mealy. Not at Kensington’s, where a thick succulent steak was rubbed with garlic and citrus, scored by the grill, and finished with a roasted garlic and lemon dressing. Grilled sweet potato and a superb vegetable medley almost forgot their role was to play second fiddle.
Still on a seafood kick, we found halibut “cassoulet” ($27) a clever idea, the halibut perhaps standing in for duck, the chopped lobster for sausage and applewood-smoked scallops for cured pork, all of these “meats” mingling with white beans, capers and roasted garlic cloves in a slow-cooked tomato broth with toasted fennel seeds and saffron. Best to put cassoulet in quotes, as I did, because it’s another word that generates specific expectations.
We had three entrées left. I thought I had ordered only two meats, but I couldn’t find a non-meat dish. I kept lifting the stainless steel domes that were keeping our entrées warm and peering at them, trying to solve this conundrum. It finally dawned on me that one was the fully vegan “cassoulet” ($21), whose smoked-mushroom-and-potato dumplings not only appeared meat-like but gave similar satisfaction when we bit into them. Not, explained Chong-Jimenez later, that he was trying to fashion substitute meat for vegans. Believing good vegetarian preparations can stand on their own, he has also created stuffed cabbage ($19) and vegetable lasagna ($24) main dishes.
But unrepentant carnivore that I am, I was in heaven sinking my teeth into slices of braised lamb shoulder ($38) that had been dry-rubbed with cardamom and ginger, and then poached in a Marsala broth with onions and Swiss chard. Nor did I enjoy any less Kensington’s tenderloin ($39), the buttery beef served over caramelized onion and turned potatoes with a morel mushroom demi-glace and the chef’s signature bouquet of vegetables. This is the sort of accomplished cooking rarely found outside elite French restaurants like Thomas Henkelmann’s in Greenwich or La Panetière in Rye, New York.
We hadn’t saved much room for dessert, but we were more than a little curious how Chong-Jimenez’s skill with savory preparations would translate to sweet ones. Again taking poetic liberties, but welcome ones, Chong-Jimenez’s tarte Tatin ($8) featured a puff pastry pinwheel topped with half a caramelized Cameo apple served in a moat of cinnamon crème anglaise with garnishes of homemade vanilla ice cream, strawberries and an edible orchid.
Not much to look at despite being dressed with another orchid and fabulous blackberries, the pecan diamond ($8) proved to be sweet, chewy, toothsome fun. And although crème brûlées ($8) are to restaurant critics as constant mother-in-law visits are to newlyweds, Kensington’s raspberry-and-white-chocolate version of the classic might have been the best any of us had ever encountered.
Given the luxurious ambiance and refined service we enjoyed, our amazing meal verged perilously close to perfection. Under Chong-Jimenez’s leadership, Kensington’s deserves to be at or near the top of any list of Connecticut’s finest restaurants—east or west of the Connecticut River.