So, Restaurant Week is over.
(Spoiler Alert: Gene and I skipped tonight’s reservation in lieu of just ordering pizza…first world problems, yo!)
Night One: Dinner @ the restaurant in a hotel a town over. Yummy, delicious, and the smell was incredible (I have more waxing poetic to do about that, BTW…later?). Gene won because his salmon was better than my beef.
Night Two: Dinner with Gene’s coworker and his partner at an Italian restaurant down in Cheesecake City. The best decision I made all week was ordering a glass of wine. The second best decision I made all week was ordering the second glass. The food was good, but not as good as last Restaurant Week. It was nice to patronize an Italian restaurant without the words “Olive” or “Macaroni” in the name but the drive was pretty long. I had carpaccio, veal and chocolate lava cake. Gene had…hmm. Scallop, something else, and panna cotta for dessert.
Night Three: Back to the seafood restaurant where we celebrated Gene’s birthday in August. I had peanut soup (yummy!!!!), duck (also very good!!) and a delicious dessert that I can no longer recall, even when looking at the menu. Gene had mini fish tacos (deeeelicious!), sea bass (as opposed to land bass? Or Chuck Bass?*) and a not-chocolate dessert. I noticed that we got spotty service, but I still want to try this restaurant’s huge sushi menu someday. (But why drive 30 minutes away when we have delicious sushi 3 minutes away?). My duck was better than his sea bass, so I won.
Night Four: I had to work late, so we ate at a nice restaurant across the street from our neighborhood. I started with the calamari (with a drizzle of wasabi sauce, sooo good!), had a lovely entree (the salmon, I think?) that was just a touch over cooked and chocolate cake for dessert. Gene had goat cheese on pita (it sounds meh, but it was very good), the crab cakes (He thinks, but the more I consider it I think he had chicken) and carrot cake (?) for dessert. I won. Or maybe Gene won. Who remembers? The bottled water cost as much as a mixed drink. Feh.
Night Five: I was supposed to leave work @ 6, ended up getting caught up (Stupid Year End!) and had to have Gene reschedule our dinner reservation for 7:30. To be honest, when we made the schedule this was one of the nights that I would have been pretty happy with grilled cheese at home but when the rubber hit the road…who wants to clean? I started off with a shrimp appetizer that was nice but very complicated in presentation (the theme of the restaurant, I think), veal osso buck (very delicious!) and apple tart for dessert (the tart was inexplicably paired with mint ice cream…wtf?). Gene had mussels (which were very good), crab cakes and creme brûlée for dessert. This was the night I devised the rule “If we can’t choose who wins, we must consult the server” (because we apparently enjoy looking like giant assholes in public?) and we spent the meal discussing restaurants we preferred to the one we were sitting in.
Night Six: Wednesday! The night we ate at our very favorite local restaurant (that we are going to sometime in the future with Denise and her husband the Almighty G)! Yay! Compared to the crush at the other restaurants in the week, it was nice to be some place where the servers recognize us and we could actually talk. I started with a ‘mini’ wedge salad that was so good. I love wedge salads. I had the steak entree, which is quite rare for me (beef joke!) but was amazing. For dessert, I had a root beer float and regret (but on the bright side, it cured my root beer float craving). Gene had risotto, chicken, and the house specialty red velvet cake (which is why I had regret for dessert). He won on the strength of his better tasting dessert, although my steak kicked A Serious Amount of Ass and we probably should have consulted the server.
Night Seven: We ate at our former favorite local restaurant. I started with deviled eggs, then prime rib (yes again) for my entree and super decadent brownie for dessert. Gene had pimento cheese and guacamole dips for appetizer, trout for dinner and strawberry shortcake for dessert. I won because the shortcake was actually served on a biscuit (why do restaurants do this??? I think a shortcake may technically be a biscuit but…meh), although it helped that Gene drank both of our complimentary glasses of wine. (I was driving, Mom).
Night Eight: Dinner was at a “Brazilian” style steak house. It was the first restaurant where the three courses that make up a restaurant week meal did not include dessert. At a Brazilian steakhouse, you start with a trip to a really big salad bar and then you eat your salad. After that, waiters wander around with huge skewers of meat and they offer it around. It’s kind of a reverse buffet. No winner that night because we both had the same thing. It was all a little too Golden Corral for me so I don’t think we’ll go back.
Night Nine: Mexican with Denise and the Almighty G. The town I used to work in is home to a fancy Mexican restaurant and we always make it a point to visit it during Restaurant Week because it’s a convenient excuse to hang with Denise for a couple of hours (to be honest, it could be Emissions Inspection Week and I’d do the same thing). I had seafood enchilada thingys, Gene had some sort of fancy Mexican pork chop. The service was slow but it turns out that neither couple paid for the queso and guacamole, so, huzzah. The restaurant was pretty crowded with big parties so by the end I think we were all ready to clear out. I automatically win this night because I got to hang with Denise.
Night Ten: About 3 PM today, I looked at Gene and asked if he really felt like going down into the city for dinner. He didn’t. I didn’t. We ordered pizza.