Restaurant Review: Girl & the Goat

3 months after securing our reservation on OpenTable, Joyce & I finally got a chance to dine at Girl & the Goat on Monday. After carefully pouring over Yelp reviews all day to determine what to get, we were pretty excited. And not just for the food; Joyce became a big fan of the goat mascot.

Upon arriving we happened to get seated off by ourselves…at the kitchen counter. I’m not quite sure what we did to get these seats, but it was a pretty cool experience. We got a great view of the plating of quite a few of the dishes, no noisy neighbors, and a friendly staff. After making our selections (and being reigned in a bit by the waitress, who basically  convinced us to get mini orders of our veggies), we were ready to eat. Without further delay, the dishes:

Pretzel Bread served with Honey Mustard Butter & Thousand Island Dressing

I’m a sucker for bread. In particular, I’m a sucker for pretzel bread, so this was a no-brainer. The bread itself wasn’t very salty (as a lot of pretzel breads tend to be), but when combined with the honey mustard butter it was incredible. I didn’t make it over to the thousand island dressing as I ended up being too busy lathering butter onto my slices.

Grilled Baby Octopus served with Guanciale, Romano Beans, Radish, & Pistachio-Lemon Vinaigrette

Once again, I found an entree that I basically will order off the menu anywhere that I go. You can’t go wrong with grilled octopus…and apparently I was so excited to eat that I didn’t even realize I didn’t take a picture. Fortunately, this was probably one of the less exciting platings (imagine all of the above ingredients, including chopped up octopus, tossed in a small bowl). The ingredients played well off each other, though the romano beans took some concentrated chewing.

Goat Empanadas s__erved with Romesco & Kohlrabi-Endive Slaw

We love empanadas, and wanted to try something goat related due to the name of the restaurant, so we ended up with these. The texture of the empanada was nice and crispy, and the goat filling was very tasty as well. I could have probably eaten quite a few of them and called it a night. I’m not very knowledgeable on the price of goat, but this seemed like the worst “bang for our buck” of the night purely based on quantity of food, but the quality was quite good.

Sauteed Green Beans served with Fish Sauce Vinaigrette & Cashews

These greens beans had a nice salty taste with just the slightest hint of fish sauce. Fortunately we are big fans of salt; Joyce ended up scooping up some of the leftover vinaigrette at the end to savor it. This would likely be a repeat item for us. Additionally, if you can imagine, both this and the other vegetable dish coming up are both “Mini” orders (which were definitely enough for 2 people). While not listed on the menu, apparently you can mini-size dishes for a lower price.

Diver Scallops served with Pumpkin Brandade, Fried Brussels Sprouts, Spiced Pecans, & Pomegranate Seeds

I wasn’t blown away by the scallops. Normally I’m a pretty big seafood lover, but after the courses prior to this, I felt like this mix of ingredients didn’t really do it for me. Scallops by themselves have a pretty distinct taste and I felt that it really overpowered the rest of the items, so much that they didn’t really do much complementing. It didn’t help that the scallop really started to fill me up.

Roasted Cauliflower served with Pickled Peppers, Pine Nuts, & Mint

Not quite the fault of the cauliflower, but by this point I was pretty stuffed. Additionally, they gave us the cauliflower…and then the pig face was right behind it (unlike the rest of the dishes that were served one at a time). To be honest, I can’t recall a particular taste of the cauliflower, which was somewhat disappointing considering a lot of people seemed to really like them.

Wood Oven Roasted Pig Face served with Sunny Side Egg, Tamarind, Cilantro, Red Wine-Maple, & Potato Stix

This was the item that we had read the most about on reviews, so I was pretty excited to try it as a lover of pig. Unfortunately, I was pretty beat by this point. After laboring to destroy the egg and mix it with all the ingredients, I took my bites and experienced both euphoria at how tasty the pig was as well as wanting to roll over and sleep. I wish that we either ordered less food or this came earlier in the courses so I could have really enjoyed it.

Pumpkin Pie Gelato served with Spiced Cake, Spiced Pecans, Cranberries, Thai Whipped Cream, & Left Hand Milk Stout

This dessert left the back of my mouth pretty spiced out, however the overall mixture of ingredients was very tasty (as you may expect, it tasted just like a pumpkin pie). I particularly enjoyed the combination of spiced cake, pecans, and the gelato. I would recommend trying this dish, it is mostly just an interesting experience.

Bittersweet Chocolate served with Toffee, Shiitake-Caramel Gelato, & Shiitake Gastrique

This dessert was on the house, which makes everything taste better. That being said, the bitterness was a bit more than I was expecting and tended to overpower the rest of the dish unless I selectively chose my spoonful. I don’t think I would get it again, but then again I didn’t order it.

Overall, I really enjoyed the meal. I would say that for two people, this was way more food than we needed and by the last 1/3 of the meal I was basically stuffing down food and taking breaks to regain stomach strength. I’d compare it overall to something like The Purple Pig; in fact some of the dishes on the menu seemed strikingly familiar to dishes that we’ve ordered there (and thus we purposely ordered different things). I’m not sure if it really met up to the expectations of the multiple month reservation wait list. I think you’d be just as satisfied at The Purple Pig or Avec in the same price range, but it’s definitely worth trying for comparison sake.