Date Night Idea | Recreating A Restaurant Favorite At Home
Posted in Date Night Ideas, Food, Jack, Jill and tagged with aioli sauce, Cooking, Couples, Dating, Food, Marriage, Relationships, vesta dipping grill, wine on 04/01/2009 11:25 am by Jack and JillWe swear we followed the directions.
One of our favorite restaurants is in Denver Colorado called Vesta Dipping Grill. Not only do they have a wide selection of proteins; seared tuna, grilled lamb, smoked duck, of course chicken, and my favorite madras grilled venison. They have vegetarian choices as well. *suppress yawn*
What makes Vesta Dipping Grill unique however is, you guessed it, the dipping. My G’d the dipping.
To accompany your entrée you select three dipping sauces from over 36 dipping sauces (37) in three categories: Sweet, Savory, Spicy with names like Blake St. BBQ, Wasabi Cream Sauce, Steuben’s Chimichurri.
Each dipping sauce, and they make pairing suggestions for you if you’d like, creates a completely unique experience for every bite. Many times the dipping changes your meal into a completely new dish.
The reason we bring this up is because one dipping sauce stood out from the rest. The almighty “Black Pepper Aioli.”
Just hand us each a spoon.
And so we set out. The directions were easy enough.
- six cloves garlic: pressed.
- two yokes: yoked.
- olive oil: half cupped.
- pepper
- simple - blend garlic and yokes. drizzle oil. constant beating until thick. Add pepper
What’s to mess up? ’Parently plenty.
All we could taste was the burn of raw garlic swimming in a mess of a mayonaise. Our Aioli sauce had an outcome that the recipes didn’t mention. It sucked balls. We added more oil. Wrong.
We wish we had a better outcome to report. We did try again and simply cut the garlic in half. Nope. Still sucked.
The only thing we can think of, cuz we’ll be trying this again, is our choice of olive oil. We think we bought a cheap brand. Garlic is garlic. Egg yoke is egg yoke. But oil… there’s the rub.
We went with Extra Virgin First Cold Press. For those that make this well (and you’re probably not reading my post about it anyway) you may recognize this as my mistake. To be determined. For we are determined. To make my Black Pepper Aioli Sauce NOT blow.
Wine was good – that’s what’s really important.
We want to hear from you! Tell us how it went for you on making a restaurant favorite! 
April 11th, 2009 at 9:02 am
We tried to make taco pizza like our local guy…just didn’t work out the same way but really fun!!!!!
May 11th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Hi, maybe if you roasted the garlic before pressing it would help. That seems like alot of raw garlic but just a suggestion b/c I don’t know anything about what makes olive oil better.
May 12th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Thanks Alicia! I think you are absolutely right in roasting it first…I actually can’t believe we didn’t think of that – Ugh!
May 12th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Hey, thanks for the restaurant tip. I’ve lived in the Denver area forever and never heard of this place. Sounds good.
I’ve been trying to replicated the creamy French onion soup at the Outback for years. No luck, probably because I don’t use enough cream and butter to give me an instant heart attack.