Very nifty Italian restaurant.
Our outing produced one LEGENDARY dish, one very very very good dish, and everything else was superior or very good.
You can't really complain about that.
On the stuff that was merely lovely:
(What follows is a list of warm-up acts).
Fine fine fine olive bread.
A very nifty soft cheese and red peppers to spread on same.
A traditional dark mushroom soup with powerful mushroom taste.
A pleasurable panzanella - which here means cucumber salad with great big croutons.
(Textbook panzanellas have anchovies, but the cook chose to leave them out here.
Samuel C kills for anchovies but I did not miss them here.)
A comforting salmon tartare.
Farfalle with goat cheese and pesto with addictive pan sauteed pinoli nuts.
I ate the other bitefuls waiting for the next pinoli nut treat.
* * *
Now for the silver prize and the gold legendary trophy:
The Silver Prize is for some of the best french fries I have had EVER.
Now upscale restaurants tend to have really really good french fries.
So no promise that your local French bistro does not make french fries that bring tears to your eyes.
But these babies were pure and unadulterated cocaine.
Potato raised to the highest level of flavor and nobility.
If you were to be reborn as a potato,
and you were to be dug out of the ground -
you would want to have mkt make a french fry out of you.
Your existence in your life as a potato would have been justified.
* * *
And the envelope please ....
The Gold Legendary award for Awesome and Unique Dessert:
(drum rolls,
rotating spotlights,
Katy Perry's hand shaking as she hands the envelope to the emcee ...)
The winner is
THE LEMON TIRAMISU CAKE!
(The crowd roars!)
* * *
I have never had a dessert like the Lemon Tiramisu cake.
It was NOT sweet.
The only function of the sugar was to cut the lemon.
It had a head-filling mouth-filling lemon taste without being either cloying or tart in any way.
It was a cake - but it was light as chiffon.
There was none of the stodge that comes with
a chocolate layer cake or a banana cake or a red velvet cake.
It was not laden and rich like a tres leches cake.
* * *
This cake floated like a helium balloon and sang its lemon song.
* * *
I floated like a helium balloon and sang my lemon song.
* * *
The world was creamy.
The world was white and yellow.
* * *
Undoubtedly with all that filling, the cake had more than its share of calories.
But it tasted like I was eating a lemon cream breeze without a calorie to its name.
* * *
I will undoubtedly come back to earth tomorrow
When I weigh myself after all that olive bread, farfalle, french fry and cake.
* * *
But right now, I am flying in a canary colored sky.
Not a bad result for one night at a restaurant.