Must have for Fall: Pumpkin Souffle from rise n°1

November 25, 2013December 27, 2013 elysa

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A few days ago I asked on Facebook and Twitter, “if someone where to give you $100 gift card to a Dallas restaurant… which restaurant would you want?”. My first pick (as you may have guessed by the title of this post) is rise n°1. It was rise n°1 that inspired us to start Dallas Food Nerd back in February of 2010. AND we got engaged at rise in December of 2011!

You might be wondering where this random question even came from. We were given the opportunity, through Grapevine Lincoln, to drive a white Lincoln MKZ for the weekend and have a nice dinner compliments of the MKZ Date Night program! They gave us a Visa gift card to spend at a restaurant of our choosing.

Rise only takes reservations for parties of 5 or more, so we opted to go fairly early on Saturday evening to beat the rush. We were seated almost immediately.

I was being indecisive about which wine to get so I opted for a Flight of French Reds. I love this option because I got to try 4 different wines. Of the four, there were two I liked, one I LOVED and one I wasn’t too fond of. The good news is each of these wines can also be ordered by the glass or by the bottle.

A little about the wines I had:

Pavillon de Chavannes, Cuvee des Ambassades: this one was my favorite, it’s made from Gamay grapes which I wasn’t familiar with. Their menu says this is “home run for Pinot drinkers”.
Le Petit Vin d’Avril: this one was my least favorite, but good news, Rory liked it. It has both Grenache and Mourvedre. I think it was the tobacco undertones that I wasn’t fond of.
Domaine de la Garreliere, le Rouge: this light bodied Cabernet Franc went really well with my food, both the spicy souffle I had as an entree and the Pumpkin souffle!
Bila Hunt, L’Esquerda: I got distracted by the Pumpkin in between the 3rd and the 4th wine, but fortunately I like this one enough for it to stand alone after I finished eating. I really enjoyed this blend of Syrah, Grenache and Carignan. It was a close second to the first in the flight.

And now for the food:

The menu changes seasonally, but there is one staple that we both LOVE. I remember the first time we went to rise for dinner there were multiple foursquare tips talking about the Marshmallow soup. I’m so glad we decided to take the advice of our fellow food nerds and try it. I think it’d be safe to say that Rise’s Marshmallow soup is my favorite soup in the entire city of Dallas. If you like tomato and pesto flavors you must try it. I don’t want to giveaway too many details about it, other than to say order it next time you go.

There was a little bit of a mix-up with my entree so I ended up with the Southwest Souffle. Rory had the Chef’s Special that had Duck and some sort of Orange sauce. Souffle doesn’t necessarily photograph well, but they were both rich and flavorful!

And last but not least we shared their seasonal Pumpkin Souffle. If you don’t have time for a full meal at rise this week you should at the very least stop in to have this dish. Our waiter told us they may stop making it after Thanksgiving, so hurry in!