Text 12226, 95 rader
Skriven 2007-02-23 07:48:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: dinner with edan 107
============================
This was our Valentine's dinner - as you know, I didn't see
Carol until 10:45 Valentine's night, thanks to the huge ice
storm on the east coast, and anyhow we had sort of doubted
the wisdom of going out to eat on a day when restaurants
were overtaxed, their food premade, and their staff grumpy.
So we waited a couple days, perfect.

We've become sort of fond of Sputnik, a very quirky place,
for special occasions, so we decided to dine there. The fact
that I get 100 Open Table points (value on the open market
50c) for each reservation doesn't hurt too much, and the
fact that I get to make reservations on line helps a lot.

I made an early reservation - as soon as Carol was done work,
she picked me up, and off we went. When we arrived, shortly
before 6, we were not the only customers, a good sign.

We asked for Edan, our waiter from last time, an aspiring
artiste (I forget the genre, only knowing that it's totally
alien to me). Carol asked him how his last gig had gone; he
said fine, only he'd been late and so in his haste had smashed
up his father's Jeep in getting there.

While Carol was off freshening up, I ordered the Asian snacks
($2.50 per person), which were not described on the menu in any
way - sort of chef's choice or pot luck, I guess. What came -
five little dishes:

kimchi of the Chinese cabbage variety was standard, medium
hot, less garlicky than usual;

on the other hand pineapple-scallion kimchi was distinctly
nonstandard (though medium hot and less garlicky than the
usual) - not sweet at all, but an interesting spritz on the
tongue bespoke good fruit sugar gone to alcohol;

sauteed bean sprouts were bland and normal, touched with a
little sesame oil - they could have done with a bit of soy;

fried kameboko came out in little triangles that reminded me
of fish-flavored French toast;

black beans were sugar cured in the way that in China adzuki
beans that are meant to be served with BBQ are - a sort of 
odd treatment with these larger ones.

Dieu Donne Methode Cap Classique Blanc de Blancs 02 (South
Africa) was a nice toasty wine but a little unassertive in
relation to the kimchis (though fine with the other dishes).
Both of us detected some oddity in the midpalate - I called
it medicinal, Carol said more like metallic. Toasty slightly
bitter finish; quite good with the oyster things to follow.

We decided on three appetizers each instead of the usual
starter, main, and dessert. Thus we spent just a little less,
got a little less food, and amused ourselves a little more.

Carol's oyster coconut soup, which I described last time we
had it as "tom kha oysters," was quite nice though saltier this
time; I had a special, oysters on the half shell, four lovely,
fat, sweet, briny ones served with a sprinkle of scallions and
two unnecessary dipping sauces, saus prik and ponzu.

Carol's next dish was grilled squid with seaweed salad -
just barely cooked rings and tentacles on your usual dark green
slivered sweetened stuff; I countered this with broiled chicken
livers, which were wrapped in good thick meaty smoked bacon and
cooked so the outsides were very dark and the interiors very
pink - delicious - there was a garnish of prunes, pretty
successful, and a sauce that tasted like reduced prune juice,
less so (though I believe that there had been an adulterant,
perhaps a glugg of Port or something, in the prune juice).

I finished with adobo baby back ribs, authentically tartly
adobo (one of the owners is a Filipina), but which were not
baby backs, rather regular ribs from a smallish pig. They had
been cooked crisp outside and tender inside and were quite good.

Carol was kind of full, but I goaded her into ordering another
special of the day, which Edan had described as grilled slices
of lamb at 6 something, but which turned out to be three rib
chops at 9 something. They were, excellent, also brown on the
outside and very tender (rare) inside, almost a full meal
serving, and definitely worth 9 something.

With the meaty things we shared a glass of the Beaumont
Cabernet Sauvignon (South Africa), which was pleasantly
spicy and plummy but also a little corked.

Edan half-heartedly tried to sell us on dessert. His failure
to do so was the only major failure of the meal.

___ Blue Wave/386 v2.30
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
 * Origin: Doc's Place BBS Fido Since 1991 docsplace.tzo.com (1:123/140)