Updated to correct reservation phone number.

Executive chef Scott Hunnel is trying something different at the estimable Victoria & Albert’s this summer. Along with the fine dining restaurant’s usual seven course menu, Hunnel and his team are offering a nine-course degustation menu. 

Degustation (dee-guh-STAY-shun or day-guh-STAY-shun) means to taste completely, and a degustation menu is often offered as an alternative to a restaurant’s a la carte menu as a set-price sampling of the chef’s best efforts. Vicki & Al’s, of course, does not have an a la carte option, so the offering of a nine-course meal over a seven-course dinner may seem like a fine line.

But those two extra courses are enough to throw the restaurant’s timing completely off. Victoria & Albert’s generally offers two seatings each evening, an early seating and a late one. Because it’s a small restaurant that focuses on impeccable service that matches the fine quality of the food, it’s obviously imperative that the guests at the early seating have all finished and left the restaurant before the guests for the later seating have arrived. And V&A is not the type of restaurant one wants to do a dine and dash; it’s a place to savor.

So those two extra courses can add as much as another hour to an already two and a half to three hour dinner. So that’s why Hunnel is trying the degustation menu during these summer nights. Between now and the middle of September, Victoria & Albert’s has only one seating Sunday through Thursday, the early one. Fridays and Saturdays still have two seatings.

So the degustation menu is offered as an option to all guests during the week and only to guests at the late seating on weekend evenings. Usually when a menu like this is offered, the restaurant will require all guests at a table have it. But V&A is allowing guests at the same table to opt for it even if their companions choose to stay with the seven-course dinner. (Those guests would sit without a serving for the second and fourth courses of the degustation dinner.)

Why would anyone choose to stick with the seven-course dinner rather than go with the nine? Well, there’s the price to consider. The regular prix fixe dinner is $135 with the option of pairing wines with each course for $65. The degustation menu is $210 — the same price charges at the chef’s table and in the Queen Victoria Room, which offers tableside service. Wine pairings for the degustation dinner are an additional $105. Still, I’m told that about fifty percent of guests have been opting for the longer and higher priced dinner when they arrive and discover it is an option.

So with it showing early popularity, will it continue past the summer? That hasn’t been decided; there’s still the issue of timing. We’ll find out when September rolls around.

In the meantime, if you’d like to book a table at Victoria & Albert’s for the summer degustation, call 407-939-3862 (reservations are mandatory).