City Restaurant Week: The Exchange

EDITOR'S NOTE: City Restaurant Week is off and running. Keep reading Second Helpings this week. Staffers will be grabbing tables at all participating eateries.

By BETSY PRICE

The Exchange seems to be running a B.Y.O.W. menu this week for City Restaurant Week: Bring your own wheelbarrow.

By the end of these hefty lunches, you're gonna need one so your friends can haul you out.

The Market Street restaurant offers three courses, and you can pick any two items on the menu for $15.

Starters include vichyssoise; Exchange salad of apples, raspberries, candied walnuts and blue cheese on field greens; or smoky peanut soup with shredded chicken and ancho cream.

Entrees are a hand-carved corned beef with pickled red cabbage, Swiss cheese and coarse mustard on rye, with a mountain o' hand-cut fries (our description; not theirs); duck leg confit with wilted frisee and crispy potatoes; and a cheddar and asparagus omelet with a mountain o' fries.

Diners get two choices for dessert: Signature Sorbet Trio or Chocolate Mousse infused with Grand Marnier.

One of us got the Exchange salad with the sandwich; the other got the smoky peanut soup and omelet, mostly because we couldn't bear the idea of all those duckies on crutches.

The soup and salad were excellent. The soup -- served in a big bowl -- was a thick puree tinged with a smoky, spicy flavor, apparently from the ancho chilies. It would have been a fine lunch all by itself.

The salad arrived in the same size bowl and seemed small at first glance, but proved to be much more substantial than it looked. It was a perfect starter with its light dressing.

Both of us have seen footballs smaller than the corned beef sandwich, which was dwarfed by the pile of fries. And the abundance wasn't just limited to our plates. Small children could have played hide and seek behind the plates around the restaurant.

The sandwich was fresh, tasty -- and seemed like it was made-to-order. The omelet was fine, but seem ordinary, especially in contrast to the fabulous soup.

We splurged and got the mousse, too. It was thick and creamy with just enough kick from the Grand Marnier to make it feel like a special end to the meal.

We arrived late for lunch Monday, and service was slower that we would have liked, but understandable, because by that late hour, the restaurant was down to one server.

That wouldn't stop us from recommending the fine food.