Date Night
G. Grod and I live far from our families, so we don’t have the luxury of dropping Drake off at a relative’s house. Luckily, we’ve made good friends in the year we’ve lived in our new house, one of whom offered to swap childcare with us once a month. For politeness’s sake I said I had to check with G. Grod, but he agreed as readily as me.
We considered dinner and a movie, but the movie times were tight, and we wanted to take our time over dinner. Then we had to decide where to go. I assembled a list of six different restaurants, then emailed my favorite local food critic for her opinion, since she has been invaluably helpful in the past. Alas for us and good for her, she was out of town on her honeymoon, so we were on our own. We narrowed our choices down to two restaurants. One, Restaurant Alma, we had not been to in a long time, but is not far and very nice. It’s expensive, but that’s based on the high quality of its mostly local, organic ingredients. The other option was a French restaurant that had just opened the previous Monday. It also was expensive, and its menu sounded exquisite. Eventually we decided on the restaurant we’d been to before. We have too little time and money to act like we’re on the cutting edge of fine dining. Let others with more resources test out the new place, and let the staff and kitchen work out the kinks in the first couple weeks. We’ll go if we get the confirmation of a good review.
G. Grod and I both had a three-course, prix-fixe menu. I started with fresh buffalo mozzarella slices layered between slabs of roasted squash and garnished with dabs of herbed olive oil. G. had a beef terrine with spicy mustard. Next, I had orzo and lobster in a white wine and butter sauce. The orzo was done perfectly, tender and each grain separate, with the lightly sauced lobster chunks as a complement. G. had orecchiette pasta with spicy sausage and fall greens. For our entrees, I chose the pan seared Kobe beef garnished sparingly with black truffle hollandaise, and roasted celery root and carrots. G. had the sauteed scallops in a red wine rosemary sauce. We hemmed a little over whether to get dessert at all, or whether to share, but eventually could not agree on one, so got one apiece. G. got the chocolate tasting plate, with a dark chocolate terrine, rum chocolate cashew truffle, chocolate sea salt cookie, and caramel ice cream. While it sounded delicious, I felt I needed something a little less heavy, so I had the buttermilk panna cotta with dried cherries, which was sweet and light and tangy and bright. It was a lovely finish to a lovely meal. Each dish of each course was small and perfectly executed. The sauces and garnishes always allowed the high quality of the main ingredient to shine. The timing was steady, but neither rushed nor too slow. The service was attentive but not intrusive, and my water glass never ran dry.
We returned home just after Drake had gone to bed, so we visited with our friends and their daughter, then watched our movie. It was a lovely meal, and a lovely night, made all the more lovely for the kindness of friends who enabled it, as well as its rarity, which allowed us to savor it.