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Sea Grass Bistro
(207) 846-3885
30 Forest Falls Drive, Yarmouth
www.seagrassbistro.com
Open for dinner Tuesday through Saturday from 5:30
Entrées $22 to $28
Handicapped accessible, reservations recommended
The local farm's best produce and a local woman's best work combine for fabulous dinners.
Stephanie Brown opened this sleek spot in 2005, and has been cooking heavenly vegetables, meats, and fish ever since. Some object to the space, because the noise can ricochet off the hard surfaces. But otherwise, with fine service and friendliness all 'round, how can you not have fun? A good wine list can get you started off right, with long, crisp thin cheese bread sticks to enjoy while you contemplate your order.
I fell for the grilled vegetables and goat cheese in a crisp phyllo crust ($22) with its sublime contrasting of charcoal notes and goat cheese's tart creaminess. A base of roasted kale and huge yellow butter beans in a butter sauce made this feel like a garden on a plate. Vegetables, often afterthoughts, play some of Brown's leading roles. Salads are fresh and inventive, and side vegetables are cooked precisely, neither too crisp nor overdone.
In winter it would be hard to resist pork ribs and hot Italian sausage braised with roasted tomatoes and red wine on angel-hair pasta ($24). The short ribs are smoked in-house with hickory, lashed with molasses and brown sugar, and set on pureed parsnips ($22).
And don't neglect the desserts, like butter pecan ice cream with hot fudge sauce ($5) or perhaps a lemon curd napoleon ($7). Lucky you!