Veuve Clicquot Après Ski Chalet @ W Hotel, Boston

Sometimes ... sometimes seemingly random partnerships happen, and this is the story of one of them. The Gallery at the W Boston partnered up with Veuve Clicquot for the winter to transform half the restaurant into ... an Après Ski Chalet. It also features a photo booth, decked out like a ski lift.

A ski chalet, inside a restaurant, inside a hotel.  Complete with custom winter themed drinks (spiked hot chocolate, Baileys, etc), plus of course glasses and bottles of Veuve, and pairing snacks including really fascinating duck confit cannoli (with cranberry mousse and chopped pistachios) that I wished I got to try.

I have been to The Gallery before, but only for breakfast, which I've reviewed before (spoiler: amazing bread pudding french toast!).

Unfortunately I had other dinner plans during my time staying the W Hotel, but I couldn't resist the allure to check out the space ... and enjoy my favorite part of any day: dessert.  I dragged a (local) friend with me.  We had a great experience, and I highly recommend it.

The Space

As silly, or perhaps Instagram-worthy, as it may have sounded from the outside, it turned out to be a really, really lovely space, and it was perfect for hunkering down in the blistery Boston weather.  We had a really fun (and delicious!) time.  It is open through the winter, to the public as well as hotel guests, and available for private parties too (I think it would be an awesome venue for a small group!)

Cozy Fireplace.

Any good ski chalet features a fireplace, and this one was no exception.  Was it burning real wood, or even gas?  Nah.  But it crackled extremely realistically, and really did enhance the atmosphere.  It made me wonder what brand it was, as now want one for my own house.  The deer head did make me laugh a bit though.

In front of it was a beautifully leather couch, that was the kind you sink into and never want to get out of.  It is here that we spend our evening, on the comfy couch, but the fire (in the ski chalet, in the restaurant, in the hotel, in downtown Boston, of course).

Other Seating.

Other seating areas were nearly as inviting, high quality furniture, oozing luxury, ample side tables for food and drinks, Veuve Clicquot pillows and throws, and plenty, plenty of props to grab to take to the photo booth (yes we took bottles with us!)

Christmas Tree.

My visit was over the Christmas holidays, and a tree was part of the scene as well.  Yes, those are Veuve Clicquot champagne flutes as tree decorations.

Photo Op!

I don't normally include photos of myself, or my guests, on my blog, but ... how do you not include this?  The photo booth wasn't a standard "take 3 poses" style, instead it made an animated gif.  It was ... considerably more fun than I thought it would be.  Turns out, photo booths do *not* get old!

Veuve Clicquot had plenty of branded items to bring into the booth, we choose to sport really comfy, cozy puffer coats, and of course, (over) indulge in the free flowing bubbly!  Don't worry, we didn't walk away with them, but they really were nice coats!

Dessert

The food menu prepared specially for the chalet is mostly savory pairing bites, but they did have two sweet items, one exclusive to the chalet, and one from the main restaurant menu.  The new addition was a champagne chocolate mousse with orange caviar and shortbread cookies, that did sound quite fun (orange caviar!), and I love a good chocolate mousse, but alas, I avoid caffeine in the evening, and yes, even the amount in chocolate.

That said, I was not unhappy in any way with the other option: the one item from the main restaurant dessert menu that I've been eyeing for YEARS (yes, literally).  It has stayed on the menu this whole time for good reason.  The restaurant also has an iconic Boston Creme Pie (although it has bourbon cream, even better!), a crowd pleasing chocolate lava cake, a seasonal fruit dessert (caramel apple gallette, in the winter), and seasonal panna cotta (cranberry with Grand Marnier, that was fairly hard to look past).  So even though I did a double take when browsing the full restaurant menu in advance, given my love of panna cotta, there is something I love even more: bread pudding.

Brown Bread Pudding. $12.

"Walnuts, white chocolate, sea salt caramel ice cream."

Our dessert took a while to arrive, but we didn't mind, as we occupied ourselves in the photo booth, and chatted by the cozy fireplace anyway.  I also saw it as a good sign that it was going to be served warm, which is a fairly key aspect of bread pudding for me.

If you read my blog, you know that, while I love bread pudding, I'm also fairly particularly about it, and bread pudding just comes in SOOO many styles.  Is it served warm, or cold?  Does it have distinct chunks of bread, or is it a solid mass?  Is the top crispy?  Is the inside moist and custardy?  Is there anything else to it for texture and interest?  And ... what is it paired with?  Nothing? Whipped cream?  Ice cream? Custard?

I was quite pleased with this version - yes, served warm, in a cast iron skillet no less.  Check.  Yes, it was paired with ice cream, which melted into it perfectly.  Double check.  Yes it was a bit crisp on top, yet still moist inside, and yes, it had nuts inside for a bit of crunch.  All the basics were checked off.

The ice cream was a notch above average, not just vanilla, but instead sea salt caramel.  It was sweet, yet not too sweet (sometimes caramel ice cream is just too much), but I didn't taste the sea salt.  It was incredibly smooth ice cream, and exactly the right pairing for this dessert.  Other dishes come with vanilla ice cream, Richardson's ice cream (a local brand, from Middleton, MA), but I'm not sure if this was also Richardson's, as the menu didn't call it out, and they don't seem to carry the flavor on their website.  Regardless, it was quality ice cream, and we really enjoyed it.  The only slight demerit I give to this ice cream component is that we ran out of ice cream before bread pudding, as the scoop was just a regular single scoop, and the bread pudding was so large.  We wanted more ice cream, to pair a bite of cool ice cream with every bite of warm bread pudding!

Now, for the bread pudding.  I wasn't entirely sure what form the other ingredients listed on the menu would come in - would be drizzled with a white chocolate sauce?  A coulis?  White chocolate chips baked in?  Would the walnuts just be chopped and thrown on top, or again, mixed in?  The answer to both: integrated in.  This created little pockets of sweetness from the white chocolate, and little bits of crunch from the nuts.  Points for this.

And finally, what about this whole "brown bread" part?  I was pretty excited for that, as I kinda love real, traditional, from a can, brown bread.  Do you not know what I'm talking about?  It turns out, my dining companion didn't either, and she lives in the Boston area (to be fair, she grew up in New York).  I thought "everyone" knew brown bread, but perhaps not everyone eats bread from a can (B&M brand, if you care), paired with baked beans from a can, on Saturday night growing up?  Heh.  The more you know ...

So yeah, brown bread.  A dense, hearty, molasses based bread, sometimes with raisins.  It comes in a can.  You slice it, just like cranberry sauce from a can.  You can eat it cold, you can eat it warm.  You can be "fancy", toast it, and add butter, or I suppose cream cheese, or jam, for breakfast.  Or, as we did, you warm it, in a microwave, and dump baked beans (also from a can), on top.  And then you squirt on some ketchup.  Even recipes for making this yourself call for baking it in a can.  Really.  It is a thing.  Look it up.

I'll admit that the bread pudding let me down slightly in my brown bread nostalgia, as it didn't seem particularly ... brown bready?  I didn't get the same texture, the strong molasses that I was expecting.  I wouldn't have identified it as brown bread, although I'm not sure what I would have thought it was ... clearly not just plain white bread, and certainly not something lighter and airy like challah.  Anyway, slight let down aside, it was still a good base.

The bread pudding, as I mentioned, was quite a generous portion, plenty for two people to split without feeling like they were sacrificing by sharing.

We really enjoyed it, and I'd get another anytime.