Restaurant Review: Gypsy at Red

As you might have read yesterday, December 29 is my SIL's birthday, and she wanted to eat at up at one of the ski hill's hot spots, the Gypsy at Red. There have been other incarnations of the Gypsy, but they all pre-dated my arrival back home in July 2006 so I missed them. They are fondly remembered by locals, however, so I was looking forward to sampling the fare.

The dining room is a warm place with wood and stone accents, big windows, and a nice, huge gas fireplace. The staff was excellent.

The menu looked fabulous, especially the tapas. I was on a budget, however, and I spent the time waiting for all the guests to arrive vacillating about what to have for dinner. Should I have a starter or not? Drink or not? Cheapest thing on the menu and splurge or not? Etc. Eventually, when it came time to order, I chose one of the soups on offer, which was mushroom, because I was cold (the guests were blocking the heat from the fireplace!) and the chicken, prosciutto and spinach linguine in a rich 3 cheese cream sauce for $20. This was the cheapest thing on the menu. Then I found out my dad was paying for my dinner! So, I ordered a cranberry & sprite.

The soup came to me luke warm and so I sent it back. When it returned it was so piping hot I burned my tongue, but I am not complaining! It was a really tasty mushroom soup with a nice texture and woodsy flavour.

I was expecting my main course to be small, but was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a really big portion of pasta and it was totally delicious. And rich - just as the description on the menu said it would be. My brother had the cannelloni, which he loved.


My SIL had the steak coated in a trio of peppercorns and topped with a sherry, wild mushroom & herb sauce (left), and my dad had the bacon and rosemary wrapped pork penderloin with a red wine, shallot, balsamic reduction. Both said their meals were amazing. My SIL's relative had the lamb shanks (right) but I didn't get to speak to her about how she felt about them as she was sitting too far away. My brother took the photo for me.

Finally, a friend of the family had the sweet chilli, cilantro & coconut milk poached wild salmon on jasmine rice with fresh vegetables, which looked and smelled wonderful, and, according the the diner, tasted absolutely yummy.

So, it was a fabulous meal in the end.

Except for one thing, which I'm sad to report: I got really sick after eating there. I had the worst upset stomach I've had in a long time - and I have IBS so I get really bad stomach upset often enough. This was bad bad... It lasted for about 24 hours, and when I went over to my brother and SIL's place last night I mentioned this to Shan, and she reported to me that a friend of theirs who'd had the same pasta dish I did had a really upset tummy, too, and that his girlfriend, who'd had the salmon but whom I saw sampling from his plate of pasta also had stomach upset. So, that's three of us who had the chicken linguine and had nasty GI problems afterwards. I was the only one who had the mushroom soup, so the only commonality is the chicken linguine. I'm not sure what to think as this place has an excellent reputation and nothing tasted or smelled off (though that doesn't matter), but man was I in a lot of discomfort after this meal. Will I go back, is the question. I don't know. No one else reported any ill effects from their meal, and I think it was only me and this one other guy who'd ordered the linguine.

Anyways...not a nice thing to report, and I struggled with whether to blog about it at all, but I think it was a worthwhile thing to say in the end. I don't like candy-coating my reviews and I didn't want to be disingenuous about my experience that night. While the food and service was excellent, I'm going to think twice about going back to the Gypsy at Red.