We went to Monticello, part one

Oh, you mean the other Monticello. The one on the back of the nickel? The most famous private residence in America? The house that looks like a single story but is actually two?

Yeah, we went there. More on that later. But on our trip to Canada at the beginning of August, we ran into this:



Is there any other president you'd want to evoke in naming your restaurant? Richard Nixon's California Cuisine? James K. Polk Salad Bar? Jefferson is an epicure, among the million other things he also is, and so this actually makes a little sense. The man had a massive wine collection--big enough to write about, 200 years after the fact. I remember learning as a child that Jefferson had introduced the tomato to America, eating a bunch of them to prove that they weren't poisonous (they are related to nightshade, after all). So a restaurant isn't too far off the mark.

What's interesting about this Monticello is its menu, which seems to be a mostly creole/cajun palate, something that surprised me. Two possible connections, though: Jefferson did make the Louisiana Purchase, and Jefferson was a Southerner through and through. No matter how aristocratically we may think of him now, he viewed himself as a Virginia planter (although plantation owner is more accurate) before anything else. His home reflects that; more soon on it.