Commonwealth in Cville

Commonwealth in Charlottesville, Virginia may be known for its Skybar, but the restaurant is really top notch as well. We ordered off a pre fixe menu for graduation weekend diners and I still found a number of interesting dishes I wanted to try. Here's what we ate:

For starters, grilled shrimp over a radish slaw with berry compote:

It was an elegantly meager portion (though it was a starter,) and light flavors: the tart berry sauce offset the grilled shrimp nicely.

For my entree, the grilled portobello mushroom, truffled cauliflower puree, grilled asparagus, shallot jam, topped with pistachios:

This is how vegetarian entrees should be done. Too many times in even nice restaurants, the meat-free option seems to be an afterthought, far less interesting than the other menu items. Not this dish. The mushroom was grilled to perfect juicy "meaty" texture, the pistachios adding a nice crunch to finish every bite, and the cauliflower puree was to. die. for. It was hard to believe I was eating a vegetable-based food, it was so creamy delectably good. I seriously need to recreate this at home.

And for dessert we shared the housemade butterscotch pudding and chocolate ganache cake:

Decadently rich, of course. But perhaps the best part of the meal was our wine selection, recommended to us earlier in the day by a lovely wine server at Kings Family Vineyards:

Sexual Chocolate. I know, the name seems a bit ridiculous. It's not even a sweet wine - it's actually a full-bodied red, by SLOdownWines. And it was excellent. The wine went so well with every dish we tried, yet held its own, velvety and luscious. Visit www.SLOdownWines.com for more info!

3 stars.