Eclipse Restaurant Northampton MA – Take Two

My last restaurant article for the Daily Hampshire Gazette was for Eclipse Restaurant. Since my “retirement” I haven’t eaten out at all (if you don’t count shipboard meals during a week long cruise in Alaska). I was curious about what a non-professional meal would taste like. When my friend Paul and I decided to meet for dinner last week, we both decided on Eclipse.

Zach remembered me and we got to chat a bit before dinner. The kitchen at Eclipse is open–taking up the back part of the room–and it is nice to be able to watch them working. It’s not a question of clean–any restaurant that has an exposed kitchen and unsanitary cooks is simply asking to be shut down–but a question of style and pace. We ended up in a booth and I ended up sitting with my back to the kitchen so I couldn’t watch, but whenever I turned around or when we were leaving, it was a steady and calm pace.

The food was as good as I remembered. There was a beet, mango, cherry tomato, and goat cheese salad on the menu. Drizzled with a little balsamic reduction, it came to the table a study in purple, yellow, and red, dotted white and black. Each individual piece was OK, (beets well cooked, mango ripe and sweet) but nothing special. It was when you combined tastes, taking some beet and mango and a little goat cheese, that the salad sang. The combination was sweet, creamy, and savory from the beets. I enjoyed it a lot. Paul had the Caesar with white anchovies. He liked it a lot, but I couldn’t tell you what it tasted like. Non-professional eating didn’t demand that I taste it. I would have, but it was kind of nice to simply taste my own food.

Same for the entree. I had the rack of lamb-4 cutlets-served over mashed potatoes with a side of haricot vert. A ginger-fig chutney accompanied it. The chutney was perhaps a day old, but the ginger was muted and the fig was a great condiment for the lamb. I’d asked for medium rare and got it. These days, I feel like rare meat is too often raw meat and that I should be crouching in a corner and tearing it from the bones caveman style. The lamb was subtly seasoned and quite tasty. Paul had a pork chop with a sauteed cake of grits or polenta and a white bean-corn succotash. Again, I’ll have to take his word on it–he liked it all. And, the real test, nothing was left of our dinner except for four bones on my bread plate.

Dessert was a chocolate cream pie. I picked it because of it would have the same crust as the coconut custard pie I’d loved on my first visit. Clearly the same crust, but not quite as crisp, but still good. I can’t remember what Paul had–no notes!–but his plate was empty by the time he was done. I’d forgotten that Eclipse serves coffee in French Presses, which means you’ll never get the bottom of the pot. I got to play with my iPhone’s timer.

Anyway, I still like the place, still like the food. And, it seems I still like to write about restaurant meals.