Photo: Stephen Clarke
Thinking back on my early culinary experiences, the most memorable meals were the ones where I was made to feel special. Granted, all it took back then was for a restaurant to stick a sparkler in my burger and for the staff to sing Happy Birthday, but what more could a kid want?
Dinner at 7 Prime Cuts and Sunsets at The Ritz-Carlton Grand Cayman is the adult equivalent of that – the sparklers and the Happy Birthday song may be absent, but the personal attention and the exquisite food trigger all the same emotions.
Known not only for it’s great steaks but also the view over Seven Mile Beach, 7 Prime Cuts and Sunsets recently launched the Prime to Sublime promotion, which features a selected cut of the day, and then adds a salad or soup of your choice, as well as a side, all for the price of the cut of meat.
It’s not often that the bread on the table can be described as one of the highlights of a meal, but in this case the Mango Brioche bread certainly was the start of an evening filled with highlights.
In fact, it was awfully tough to control oneself and not overdo it on the bread, in the knowledge that there is still much to follow. According to Bojan Petrovic, the food and beverage assistant manager, the bread is so popular that many hotel guests ask whether they could purchase an additional loaf to have for breakfast the next day.
My dining partner and I started off with the warm spinach salad and the French onion soup. The salad blended a seemingly impossible combination of ingredients – spinach, golden raisins, Chorizo sausage, apple and a rosemary and orange vinaigrette. Yet all these flavours blended together perfectly, for a flavourful yet refreshingly light salad.
French onion soup is, to my thinking, one of the world’s most perfect comfort foods, and it certainly fit the bill, even though my dining partner wisely choose not to finish the entire bowl in anticipation of the rest of the meal.
A pair of virgin mojitos were the perfect refresher between courses, with the minty taste cleansing the palette beautifully before the main event of the evening – the steak.
Although the cut was decided by the day of the week (of course I was going to make the fullest use of the Prime Sublime special) this was not to say that there was anything routine about the cut of meat. As the restaurant name suggests, these are prime cuts, which represent just the top two per cent of beef produced in the US. For those who are not sure as to what a medium rare steak really is, there is even a helpful guide at the bottom of the menu to help you along.
Deciding on the sauce to accompany the steak, as well as on the complementary side dish was quite a challenge though – there are just so many good options.
We made full use of the knowledge of our server Onur, who was not shy to suggest a couple of options I would not have chosen out of my own.
We decided on the Madagascar Green Peppercorn sauce and a Chimichuri sauce, both of which add a little bit of spice.
Of course, the steak can easily stand on its own, and I found myself savouring the taste of the perfectly prepared New York Strip so much that the sauces remained almost untouched, even though both were absolutely delicious and rather than overpower the steak, as many sauces do, these added flavour while allowing the taste of the meat to shine through.
As for the sides, I must admit that I had my mind made up early on – I find the rosemary sweet potato wedges irresistible. However, after chatting to Onur, I had my arm twisted to order the truffled mac and cheese instead, while my partner ordered the wild mushrooms as a side.
To say that the mac and cheese is my new favourite side might be understating the matter – it is amazing that a dish we are all familiar with can be taken to such new heights. In fact, it left my dining partner wondering out loud whether anyone would think strangely of her if she visited the restaurant and just ordered a plate of the truffled mac and cheese. This had definitely replaced French onion soup as my new favourite comfort food.
After a very satisfying meal, it took a bit of cajoling (but not much) by Onur to convince us to peruse the dessert menu. We decided on two newer items on the dessert menu, the summer berry cheesecake and the newly reinterpreted rum cake.
The cheesecake was a wonderfully light dessert, prepared in a panna cotta style, and the perfect follow on to a rather heavy meal. However, it was the rum cake that stole the show. Living in Cayman, you tend to believe that you know what a rum cake should taste like. However, this reinterpretation by the chefs at the Ritz-Carlton is something truly special. The texture is amazing, a melt in the mouth masterpiece. The dessert is now served on a bed of caramelised bananas, which truly pics up the warm tones already present in the rum. Pure bliss.
According to Bojan, the key to creating the perfect dining experience is about focussing on much more than just the food.
“In this industry we do not sell food or things, we sell the experience. People come here and everything has to come together. If one thing is off something will not go well, so everything has to come together for the experience of fine dining or of a nice dinner that you want to bring back your friends to, that you want to bring the whole family around to,” he says.
At 7 Prime Cuts & Sunsets, they have the mix just right.
For more information or to make a reservation, call 815-6200.