Restaurant: 2Vine, 24 Winthrop Street, Rochester, NY (585) 454-6020
Chef: Dmitriy Ruzhanskiy
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Fall. It’s my favorite season, and also my favorite time to write for the Best Dish list. Admittedly, trying to choose one Best Dish season over another is a lot like trying to choose which wine I like best (in other words, why choose?) but with autumn bringing with it a bounty of warm, rich, comforting dishes and hearty fall flavors, I can’t help but love its menus best, even when compared against the crunch of early spring greens or the juicy, vibrant fruits of summer.
I recently found myself in a cornucopia of all my favorite things when I sat down on a sunny autumn afternoon at 2Vine to sample their new fall dishes. One of the hardest parts about writing for the Best Dish List is the incredible number of contenders we have for each column. After comparing similar dishes at a number of local restaurants, my pick for the fall Best Dish list is the White Truffle and Market Mushroom Risotto at Restaurant 2Vine.
Everything about this risotto embodies the things we love best about the autumn months. After months of leaving the oven off and taking a light hand with our meals, fall is the time when we head back into the kitchen to cook again. Rich, comforting and hearty without being heavy, Chef Dmitriy Ruzhanskiy departs from the traditional stock-only approach and uses a porcini infused cream to give this risotto a heavenly, other worldly creaminess. It has a silkiness you don’t expect from a risotto, which is balanced perfectly by the tender bites of mushroom that permeate it. Parmesan cheese adds a salty, nutty bite, while fresh chives add brightness and dimension, the perfect complements to the sweet Aborio rice. Having been applied with a light hand, the flavor of the white truffles ties the dish together, rather than a dominating it.
Rarely does a “comfort” dish achieve such levels of interest and sophistication. It is the perfect embodiment of 2Vine itself; both effortlessly stylish and deliciously comforting. And definitely worth coming back to.
– Allison Zimmer, A-List Contributor
