With the end of the year full of gift-giving, (hopefully) helping those less fortunate and taking stock of where you'd like to see the next year go, sometimes it's nice to take a moment and treat yourself. That's what The Hive's last Fork + Bottle dinner of the year is all about: "Indulgence."
"We want to use ingredients not seen on menus in Northwest Arkansas very often, if ever, and I'm kind of digging back into my classic French cooking roots. We're really doing some fun celebratory items," says Hive head chef Matthew McClure.
FAQ
‘Fork + Bottle: Indulgence’
WHEN — 6:30 p.m. Dec. 6
WHERE — The Hive, inside 21c Museum Hotel, Bentonville
COST — $119/person
INFO — thehivebentonville.…; 286-6518 or [email protected] to reserve a seat
The Fork + Bottle dinner series started a few years ago as a way to have a "related but different" experience at The Hive restaurant inside the 21c Museum Hotel in Bentonville. Some half a dozen times a year, McClure and his culinary team build a menu around a theme -- like a crawfish boil in the spring, or celebrating Bourbon Heritage Month in September, or Irish dishes for St. Patrick's Day -- and pair each course with a bottle.
"'Bottle' could be a whiskey bottle, it could be a wine bottle, it could be a beer bottle -- we try to utilize that in playful ways," McClure reveals. "This is the one dinner where we pull out all the stops and try to do that special, fun dinner with pairings that are not [necessarily] easy to do all the time. This will showcase the breadth of talent we have in the kitchen at The Hive."
To fit the theme of "Indulgence," McClure's menu includes ingredients like char-grilled oyster, squab (a bird commonly used in European cooking) and a chocolate dacquoise (a classic French cake) -- items that indicate luxurious eating.
"There's a continuity from start to finish. Each dish is designed around itself, but it is created to fit in a certain format so that it flows nicely from course to course," McClure shares. "This specific dinner, it's a once-a-year thing so I think [people who] enjoy coming downtown [and have had] everything that everybody has to offer and they want something kind of special and new, this is for them."
-- Jocelyn Murphy
NAN What's Up on 12/03/2017