Kyle and I have been married for 13 years tomorrow. So, last night, he surprised me by organizing a babysitter and taking me out to dinner. All I was told was to be ready by six o'clock with a pretty dress.... A fancy, black car came to pick me up and bring me downtown to a beautiful, French looking hotel (the Elysian) on Walton. I had the most fantastic gin and tonic made with house tonic! Yes, they can make tonic, by steeping whatever ingredients make the base of tonic like steeping tea (and it looked like tea too), and adding grapefruit zest. Soda water created effervescence and mixed with Hendricks Gin it tasted like a summers day....
We ate in the new restaurant in the hotel - Ria. ria's decor was 2010 meets Mad Men. There was something 1960's about the furnishing and art work. But the colours were platinum, gold and silver. I half expected men sitting in the cozy chairs, smoking with thin ties and skinny suit pants. Beside there should have been women whose hair were piled on their heads with fabulous Betty Draper dresses on.
Anyway. The food. It was seafood heavy, which is unfortunate for the woman who doesn't eat seafood! But, it made me try things that normally I would not. Like foie gras. Which, I still feel kind of guilty about. I mean I know it's legal and everything now, but I have to go with Charlie Trotter on this one. I really worry that the bird was just overfed and fattened up, just so someone can grab their liver. But it's done now and the foie gras came like a pate but with a chicken consomme on top. It had roasted shallots, cherries, a beautiful yellow, sweet, sweet tomato that had been quarted with no seeds! (I almost couldn't figure out what it was...) So, I ate it (not all of it, it's extremely rich...no surprise there). Oh, and the amuse-bouche was a chilled potato gelee almost, topped with a watercress one. It was amazing and it looked like a little turtle.
Dinner was tricky. Because my choices were between guinea fowl galantine or dry aged rib-eye with bone marrow. Thankfully, Kyle ordered the rib eye, so I could view the marrow from a distance. (There were many questions for the waiter...including myself telling him exactly what I think of when someone says bone marrow. It's not pretty. But of course the restaurant scopes it out, cleans the bone, makes a custard with the marrow and pipes it back into the bone. It still looked like a dog bone though....)
The guinea fowl was delicious and it was served on a potato puree with English peas. Yum! My only complaint was that it was coved with shavings of black truffle. (Did you know that Australia grows truffles now? Yep. they took the seeds or spores from France and hey presto. Aussie truffles.) But I made a discovery. And it is that I don't actually care for truffles. (Unless Australian ones are just not as good as French ones.) I just dont get the appeal. In fact, I felt bad about doing this, but I pushed the shavings to the side and hide them under the slice of galantine that I couldn't finish! So, clearly I am not cut out for fancy cuisine. I don't eat fish, lobster, crab, mussels, or veal sweetbreads and I don't care for foie gras or truffles! Lucky Kyle. My taste is cheap! Maybe unlucky Kyle because although I don't need fancy food as a rule, we did order lots of booze (a beautiful sparkling rose and fantastic grenache, shiraz, mataro blend from Australia's barossa valley). My dessert? A brown butter hazelnut cake, broken into three pieces with halved blackberries and peachs served three ways - poached, brunoise (small dice) and a slice of dried peach. Oh and it was served with a perfectly soft scoop of crean cheese ice-cream. Yum! It was heaven. All of it - heaven. We had so much fun. Partly because Kyle thought he should ask out waiter why the restaurant was so quiet! Ha ha. Luckily the guy didn't seem to mind and we promised him we would tell everyone about how delicious the whole experience was.
So, 13 years ago we were on our way to Lou Malnati's pizzeria for our rehearsal dinner. And I LOVE that kind of food too! (Again, lucky for Kyle.)