As tomorrow we have a long day's driving, I had discovered that the Catholic Church in Deadwood had a 5.30 pm Vigil Mass of Sunday. So I walked the 1/4 mile up from the hotel to the church and got there at 4.45 with time to pray before Mass.
The Catholic community of Deadwood is not as large as that of other parts of South Dakota, there were about 45 of us at Mass and a similar number attend the Sunday Morning Mass. But St. Ambrose Church is very pretty and the singing at Mass was lusty, even before I joined in.
After Mass I walked back to the hotel and Drew and I went out for our last walk around the town, it is an amazing and amusing place with its mix of history and gaudiness. We had the strange experience of coming out of our room while about 30 people were being given the 'Ghost Tour' of the hotel. We had to walk through the crowd to get to the stairs. I wonder, by the looks they gave us, as if they thought we were part of the act??
Before the holiday Drew had spotted a few special places to eat which he had detailed for us. One of these was in Deadwood. The restaurant is called Jakes and it is on top of an otherwise fairly standard gambling and drinking joint in Deadwood called the Morning Star. The only other distinctive feature of the Morning Star is that it is owned by Kevin Costner, so Costner memorabilia is everywhere.
Jakes is a very special place, a fine dining restaurant in a town which is more down to earth. We couldn't get a table until 8.30 pm, but that wasn't a problem. The meal was accompanied throughout by a pianist playing a range of tunes from classics to the shows.
We started with bacon wrapped shrimps for me, this had a lovely lemon sauce with thyme and capers running through it and a balancing flavour of paprika giving it an unexpected warmth. Absolutely delightful. Drew opted for buffalo carpaccio which was served with toasted focaccia and loads of parmesan. Drew, for whom carpaccio is a favorite dish, thought this one was an example of excellence though he thought they might have been a bit too generous on the focaccia, but that didn't stop him eating it all.
For the salad course I had arugula salad which was served with a sharp lemon vinaigrette just to my taste. While Drew opted for the grilled Caesar salad which was rick in garlic and cheese, he reports that it was really lovely.
For mains I had a bone-in veal chop, the light rose colour of the veal, cooked as I like it (i.e. not much) was a real triumph This chef clearly knew what 'blue' means in steaks, something that isn't in the vocabulary here, so very rare is how I ask for it. It was lovely. It was served with fingerling potatoes cooked in sea salt, pan-roasted carrots with a sharp yet delicate flavour and a truffle finishing salt which added a bang to the flavour. Each of the elements were excellent, the whole dish was like a dream.
Drew opted for the pan seared duck breast which was accompanied with a pear pomegranate relish
and served over a risotto cake. The mix of sweet, tangy, pepperiness of the Duck did Drew well. He found the risotto cake a little heavy, to dry to be a real risotto. Indeed he left half of it. But the star of the meal was the duck and that was perfect.
The food had been so good that Drew wasn't even able to have a dessert, though he had two lemon sorbets (mine and his) between the salad and main course, they were designed as palate cleansers and went down at speed.
Then it was back to the hotel and to bed. Who would have expected to have such a fine-dining experience in a town like Deadwood.
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