Dine About Town....

I actually did Dine About Town three times this month! Here's some quick notes:

Aziza - my father and I intended to do DAT but after looking at the menu we decided we weren't actually saving that much money, plus we'd now be able to order whatever we wanted. Already we were off to a bad start because our water tasted "funny." I guess my dad doesn't think cucumber in your water glass is very refreshing. First up, "giant lima beans oven baked in a ras el hanout tomato purée, covered in shaved french feta, tuscan olive oil" - deemed too salty by my father. I think the feta was overkill, plus I don't like lima beans. Mine, "willey farm bloomsdale spinach & feta fingers alongside fleur de sel sprinkled greens, caper-pine nut swirl" was just okay. A little too ordinary. Now here's the part that is sad. I completely forgot what my father ate. Eek. Bad food blogger. But my dish definitely made up for the first half of the meal - "kumquat enriched niman ranch lamb shank - bergamot infused dried fruits, cranberry couscous, grilled green onion" - the lamb was amazingly melty and the bergamot was not too overpowering, which I was worried about because I don't like earl gray tea. Although I was full, I couldn't pass up the "bowl of bliss - the most heavenly cayenned dark chocolate custard & a cup of hot cocoa with black pepper marshmallow." I'm not a marshmallow that girl but that black pepper marshmallow was so yummy I'm inspired to crack black peppercorns into my s'mores from now on. The dark chocolate custard could have been more cayenned. But that marshmallow...

Frisson - this place left a bad taste in my mouth. The food was okay, I suppose, but they ran out of one of the two DAT offerings and didn't offer a substitute at all. This was okay for me because I like salmon, but my dining companion who doesn't was a little screwed. Plus, we're grad students so it's not like we could afford a three-course (or gah, even a two-course) meal here just for kicks. But we had already waited about 25 minutes for our reserved table and as it was nearly 9pm we weren't about to get up and leave to find a pizza. I won't even really talk about the food since I think it was way too pretentiously priced and not at all memorable, plus our waitress kinda sucked.

Rubicon - this place made up for our bad experience the week before. Wow wow wow. First, it was remarkable how efficient this place is. Everything was well-timed and perfectly orchestrated. And then there's the food. Oy. I couldn't stop making little "mmm" noises as I ate my soup. And I ordered the pork belly. This after I've totally been getting on my boyfriend's case about his love for all things fatty and how he should get his cholesterol checked. And I've been blaming him for the extra jiggle around my belly. But the pork belly....oooh. I've never been so happy eating a slab of fat, and that's saying a lot because as you know, fat and I have issues.

Wow, a lot of detail goes missing when you decide to write about something a month after you do it. At least my life is getting in the way of my blogging, and not the other way around. :)