With a top boutique hostelry like Kimpton operating the Vero Beach Hotel & Spa, you would not expect a change in chefs to dramatically alter the dining experience there.
And it hasn’t. Last week, when we paid our most recent visit to Cobalt – the elegant restaurant of the island’s best hotel – we probably would not even have noticed a difference had we been unaware that chef Michael VanBuskirk decamped over the summer to the Orchid Island Golf and Beach Club.
But it is different. His successor, former Cobalt sous chef Rachel Bourdon, has just in time for the holidays rolled out a new menu which is very similar to VanBuskirk’s, while placing her own creative stamp on dishes in a number of ways.
One change my husband really liked was Bourdon’s approach to oysters on the half shell ($3 each). While they previously were served with a cucumber mignonette and a cocktail sauce, they now are accompanied by an Asian pear mignonette and a tangy citrus jalapeño ice. A much more interesting combo.
A new dish that worked less well, however, was my order of a shaved beet salad ($12) with micro herbs, pecans, aged goat cheese and a lemon-miso vinaigrette. This was one of the prettiest salads I have seen in ages – large, colorful paper-thin disks of raw beet. But these obviously had been shaved from very large beets; the smaller the beet, the more tender. This dish also would have benefitted from a more lusty dressing.
A farm greens salad ($10), on the other hand, with red onion, candied chick peas, bacon, pepitas and pumpkin vinaigrette, turned out to be as nice as any I have previously enjoyed here.
For entrées, I decided to try the red snapper ($32), my husband opted for the grilled cobia ($30), and our companion on this evening chose the parmesan cheese gnudi ($26, also available as a small plate for $13).
My lovely piece of snapper was served with charred eggplant, broccoli rabe, and butternut squash puree, in a sherry buerre blanc. Excellent.
My husband’s cobia was set atop a bed of long grain wild rice, roasted peppers, smoked sausage, and shrimp, all drizzled with roasted lemon butter. He had nothing but raves. Our companion’s gnudi, prepared with herbed ricotta, pancetta, asparagus and tomato broth, was absolutely delicious.
We concluded our dinners with espressos, an apple pie ($9) and a slice of lemon cake ($9). The desserts, like the delicious basket of warm bread served before our meals, are all made in house.
Dinner for two with wine, before tax and tip, should run somewhere around $150 (less if you partake of the small plates).
Cobalt benefits from the fact that its adjoining lounge attracts large numbers of locals to what is clearly the top happy hour in town. On the midweek night we visited, the fashionable dark-paneled grill – with a 15-foot-high glass wall that looks out on the firepit and the sea – was about three-quarters full. That strongly suggests reservations if you are planning to dine during season.
On a good night, Cobalt is a very good hotel restaurant.
And Chef Bourdon appears to be off to a most impressive start.
I welcome your comments, and encourage you to send feedback to me at tina@verobeach32963.com.
The reviewer is a beachside resident who dines anonymously at restaurants at the expense of Vero Beach 32963.
