Sunday dinners are sacred, and for good reason: They’re a chance—maybe the only chance during the whole week—for you and your family to sit down together, break bread, and ask each other questions that aren’t about who did the last load of laundry. Metropole joins this tradition by offering a special prix fixe menu each Sunday night, featuring elegantly prepared comfort foods created from fresh, locally sourced ingredients.
Chef Jared Bennet switches up Metropole’s main menu on the regular to keep it seasonal and fun (case in point: The Winter 2015 menu features parsnip soup with duck confit, smoked walnuts, and cherries and charred sweet potatoes with feta, sorghum, lemon, and dukkah). But it’s his Chef de Cuisine, Jason Campbell, who designs the Sunday Supper menus. Each week since the program started in February, Campbell incorporates a subtle regional theme, whether it’s French country, Mediterranean, or, in last week’s case, German.
Campbell’s March 22, 2015 menu featured a first course of classic Bavarian snacks, including a perfectly soft-but-crispy pretzel made by Metropole’s own pastry chef, Suzanne Church; housemade beer cheese; buttery gravlax; beet pickled egg; and a summer sausage-style Kantwurst—created in the restaurant’s own kitchens, of course.
The second course—a choice of pork loin schnitzel with spinach spaetzle, charred kraut, and mustard or beer-braised chicken with borscht puree, crispy Brussels sprouts, and orange—arrived together with two shareable sides: potato cakes with apple butter and parsley and a refreshing German-inspired cucumber salad with pickled onion, crème fraiche, and rye breadcrumbs. This is really where the family-style dining gets underway, as you inevitably all eat from the same plate—even the same fork—so as not to miss a single bite.
The final dessert course of chocolate cake with crème chantilly, Metropole’s famous smoked cherries, and cocoa nibs was the perfectly-sized final note after an impossibly rich meal. It’s as if Campbell knew you had space for just a few more bites, and that they should be sweet, light, and unexpectedly savory.
And there we arrive at the very best thing about Metropole’s Sunday Suppers: The letting go. Place yourself in Chef Campbell’s capable hands and allow him to guide you through his own version of a Sunday dinner. You might be surprised, you might be delighted, and you will definitely have something to talk about.
Metropole Sunday Suppers, $38; Metropole, 609 Walnut St., downtown, (513) 578-6660, metropoleonwalnut.com
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