Verdea Wine Bar Palm Beach gets Great Review from "Off The Broiler"

Jan. 18, 2011 - PRLog -- Florida Dining: Verdea
January 4, 2011
Verdea
4530 PGA Boulevard (In Embassy Suites Hotel)
Palm Beach Gardens, Florida
(561)691-3130

Web Site:

http://www.verdearestaurant.com/


The Embassy Suites Hotel in the commercial district of Palm Beach Gardens is not where you’d expect to find a high-end, destination dining experience in Palm Beach County — you’d expect this sort of restaurant near Royal Palm Way or Worth Avenue on Palm Beach Island, South Florida’s equivalent to Rodeo Drive and where Florida’s wealthiest citizens and visitors still strut their stuff and buy Gucci bags and Patek Philippe watches on their Amex Centurion cards.

Nevertheless, there it is. Verdea, which is owned and managed by the Remington Hotels Group which manages and operates dozens of luxury hotels across the country, has opened to little fanfare in early December of 2010 in a space that used to be the hotel’s nightclub.

The restaurant, which serves New American cuisine with Mediterranean flavors with a seasonal, focused menu and sources much of its produce from Florida, has brought in the talents of Chef James King, a veteran of the Remington group’s various hotel restaurants including the One Ocean Resort in Jacksonville, and who earned his toque locally as a sous chef at the famous Breakers Hotel and then banquet chef at the Four Seasons resort in Palm Beach.  Later, he went on to participate in the opening of the hotel restaurant Quattro at the Four Seasons Silcon Valley, where he was exposed to California-style Mediterranean/Italian cuisine.

I got a chance to dine at Verdea while visiting family in Florida during the 2010 holiday season, only two weeks after its opening. I was skeptical that such a high-end, locavore-oriented, “Farm to Table” restaurant would open in such a medium-range business hotel, which would normally be reserved for a more upscale property such as a flagship Hilton or a resort hotel, but I was glad to have been proven wrong.

Unfortunately my photos in this post don’t live up to my usual standards as I was carrying my point and shoot G7 and not my DSLR. The restaurant also has very muted mood lighting and so it made for a challenging environment to photograph. However, I can assure you, the place is absolutely stunning looking inside, and the plating is gorgeous and the food is fantastic. I can’t wait to return here with my 50mm f1.4 and the 50D.

If you want to see some very nice photographs of the restaurant and its food, check out this slideshow from Barca Designs:

http://barcadesigns.com/viewing/?slideshowID=125473

The password is “verdea”

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Located next to Embassy Suites Palm Beach Gardens, Verdea Wine Bar is a member of the Farm to Table revolution - focusing on using ingredients that are sourced as locally as possible, offering a healthy, fresh, environmentally-friendly experience.