The Fish House celebrates New Year’s Eve with a four-course wine dinner, live music, and complimentary champagne toasts at midnight!
On December 31, beginning at 6:00 p.m., the Fish House will offer a special dinner in celebration of New Year’s Eve. This special menu, created by Chef Billy Ballou, features four delicious courses paired with wines selected by Beverage Director William Morse and Premier Beverage Company.
Some highlights of the menu are an appetizer selection of a Butternut Squash Tart with roasted butternut squash, Alabama chèvre, and fresh herbs paired with Peter Lehmann Layers White 2010, Barossa and Adelaide, Australia. A dessert selection: Roasted Pear and Hazelnut Parfait, layered with roasted-pear mascarpone, hazelnut nougat, and zinfandel-poached pears paired with Marqués de Cáceres Satinela 2009, Rioja, Spain.
General Manager, Jean Pierre NDione Photo: J.D. Hawyard Photography
We are right in the middle of a bustling holiday season at our house. What a wonderful time of year! It’s my favorite. We have had so many of you coming over to celebrate the season! Guests come in their holiday finest, bringing gifts, laughing, sipping champagne. Such a happy time! For our complete holiday hours,click here.
We are getting ready to celebrate the beginning of a new year with a four-course wine dinner on New Year’s Eve. We will have two seatings to accommodate those wishing to participate in this year’s Pensacola Pelican Drop Celebration on Palafox. We will also have a complimentary champagne toast and live music from Jerry Dawson of The Shiz accompanied by band members of The Astronauts. For reservations, call Melissa or Bianca at 850-433-9450. To view the menu, click here.
Down on Palafox Street, our Great Southern Events team will be hosting New Year’s Eve in the courtyard on the corner of Palafox and Government streets. There will be a bar serving delicious raspberry margaritas, mixed drinks, beer and wine. Chef Irv Miller from our sister restaurant, Jackson’s Steakhouse, will be serving a Pensacola Cheese-Steak Sandwich with caramelized onions and hot pepper cheese sauce for $7.00. The courtyard will open at 5:00 p.m. for bar service with sandwich service beginning at 6:00 p.m. Be sure to stop by and say hi so we can wish you a happy 2012!
2012 will bring Great Southern Restaurant Week. The Fish House, Jackson’s Steakhouse and Atlas Oyster House will once again team up to present Winter Restaurant Week, January 24 – 28, 2012. In step with similar events in cities all around the country, Restaurant Week is a culinary celebration that offers residents and visitors alike world-class dining at a great value. For more information, including menus, click here.
We hope that you and your family have a wonderful holiday season. Happy New Year from our house to yours!
Whole Oven-Roasted Rainbow Trout with a crabmeat stuffing
Whole Oven-Roasted Rainbow Trout by Chef Billy Ballou – Whole Oven-Roasted Rainbow Trout Stuffed with herbed lump crab. Served with roasted root vegetables and finished with herb compound butter.
Whole Oven-Roasted Rainbow Trout by Chef Billy Ballou
3/4 cup diced red bell pepper
3/4 cup diced red onion
3/4 cup diced celery
1/2 cup sliced green onion
2 tbls minced fresh thyme
2 tbls minced fresh basil
2 tbls minced garlic
4 tbls unsalted butter
1/2 cup white wine
1 each lemon (juiced)
1 pound lump crab meat
Rainbow trout:
4 each 11oz whole cleaned Rainbow trout
1 each fresh lemon
4 tbls olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
Preheat oven to 375. First what you want to do is take a medium saute pan and cook the onion, fennel, pepper, celery, garlic and butter til translucent which will take about 5 minutes. Then take your white wine and deglaze the pan, let cook for about 1 minute then remove vegetable mixture and let cool. Once cooled mix remaining ingredients with the lump crab. Once the crab mixture is done take your trout and lay the skin side down and season with salt and pepper and a little olive oil. Then take about 1 1/2 cup of crab mixture and stuff the trout. Once that is done that your stuffed trout and place it on a grease sheet pan and bake it for about 12-15 min, or until skin is nice and crunchy.
It’s brunch season and it’s about to be wedding season. Post-wedding brunches are the new “must-have” for most Southern brides, and in particular, Pensacola brides. Those of us who are lucky enough to live here know Pensacola is a paradise on the Gulf of Mexico. Living in such a beautiful place, it’s not uncommon for relatives to crawl out of the woodwork for a visit or eagerly accept an invitation to a wedding. Our emerald waters and white sands are a big lure, in addition to any other festivity, making a houseful of guests a guarantee even after the big day is over.
There is a simple, and fun, way to mark the end of the celebration and send guests off with a smile. Hold a post-wedding brunch. (link to menu) At the Fish House and Atlas, we can create a custom event (link to special events) to complement your wedding theme, colors or other special accents to personalize your event.
A post-wedding brunch is a great time to recap the festivities and indulge in delicious dishes like Pecan-Fried Green Tomato Benedict (poached eggs and crispy pecan-crusted fried green tomatoes smothered in hollandaise) and Emerald Coast Benedict (hollandaise, poached eggs, and lump blue crab cakes over fried green tomatoes drizzled with white rémoulade sauce).
We are delighted to report that we had a wonderful time at the Manna Pantry Fill a Bowl for Manna event on January 15. If you haven’t been to one before, mark your calendars for next year. Here’s how it works: Show up at Manna Pantry on 116 E. Gonzalez Street around 1:00 p.m. and purchase a handcrafted bowl provided by Pensacola State College. Then you take the bowl to different stations set up by local area restaurants like ours and sample some really incredible soups! We made a delicious black bean chili with a cilantro cream, and had a great time visiting with our friends like you who stopped by to say hello to us. There was also a great silent auction and a trivia contest emceed by our good friend Buzz Ritchie. Proceeds from the sale of the bowls as well as silent auction items benefit Manna Pantry directly. We were able help feed over 30,000 people in Northwest Florida. We like to feed people, so it was truly a win-win!
Lot's of beautiful handcrafted bowls to select from at the Fill a bowl for manna event.
We are also geared up to head over to the Pensacola Museum of Art in downtown Pensacola January 28 for Corks ’N’ Canvases 2011 from 6-9 p.m.
The evening will include:
Wine Tastings by Aragon Wine Market, The Wine Bar and Republic National
; heavy hors d’oeuvres from Jaco’s Bayfront Bar and Grille, Culinary Productions and Great Southern Restaurant Group/Fish House
; complimentary beer, soda and water provided by Lewis Bear Co.
; live entertainment on two floors by Joe Occhipinti and his Big Band and Kathy Lyon
; a live art collaboration by Ashton Howard and Joe Hobbs
; a silent auction including artwork and jewelry from Beré Jewelers, Scott Novota, Art Praha, Elebash Jewelry, Susan Campbell Jewelry, and Renaissance Man. Additional items and packages donated by local businesses, and more.
Local haunts hit big screen in indie flick Film directed by Washington grad
Trieste Kelly Dunn in a still from Brett Haley's movie "The New Year," which features several scenes at Cordova Lanes. (Special to the News Journal)
TROY MOON • TMOON@PNJ.COM • The Pensacola News Journal • JANUARY 7, 2011
Brett Haley lives in Brooklyn, but when it came to making his breakout feature film, the Washington High School graduate — Class of 2001 — looked to more familiar turf.
“I wanted it to be a little bit of a love letter to my hometown,” said Haley, 27, who filmed much of “The New Year” at Cordova Lanes in Pensacola. “It’s fun to see the places you grew up in or still visit in a film. Besides, if I tried to shoot at a bowling alley in Brooklyn, I couldn’t shoot one day for $8,000.”
That $8,000 covered the entire budget for “The New Year,” which debuts locally today at Gulf Breeze Cinema 4 in Gulf Breeze.
It has been screened at more than a dozen national film festivals, and won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the Sarasota Film Festival in April — the first time the public saw the film.
“I didn’t even think it had a chance,” Haley said. “It was pretty overwhelming.”
Haley, who has been making movies since he was a preteen, said he also chose Pensacola to shoot his film because he knew he would receive support. Local actors worked for free. Establishments such as Cordova Lanes, the Fish House, Seville Quarter, Pensacola Beach and other local spots didn’t charge a fee for the use of their facilities. (more…)
Three Restaurants, Three Menus, Three Courses, $33
Last August, we had our first-ever Restaurant Week featuring exciting menus from our three restaurants. It was so well received, and we had so much fun putting on the event, that we decided to do it again!
The Fish House, Jackson’s Steakhouse and Atlas Oyster House presents Winter Restaurant Week, January 25 – 29, 2011. In step with similar events in cities all around the country, Restaurant Week is a culinary celebration that offers residents and visitors alike world-class dining at a great value.
Chefs from each restaurant will prepare a three-course, fixed-price dinner menu utilizing the best in local and seasonal ingredients, showcasing their culinary expertise, for $33.00 per person, per restaurant. Diners are encouraged to try each special menu at all three restaurants during Restaurant Week. Menus will be available at each restaurant Tuesday, January 25, through Saturday, January 29, beginning at 5:00 p.m.
“We created the GSRG Restaurant Week event to highlight Pensacola as a premier dining destination, providing an opportunity to enjoy a special menu from each of our restaurants,” said Collier Merrill, president of the Great Southern Restaurant Group (GSRG). “This will give everybody another occasion to enjoy a great evening in Downtown Pensacola.
Last August, we had our first-ever Restaurant Week featuring exciting menus from our three restaurants. It was so well received, and we had so much fun putting on the event, that we decided to do it again!
