bookish dreamer

In the best kind of 'when it rains it pours' kind of scenario, last night my journal got discovered by ask_captianjack , ask_aboutcoffee , ask_arealdoctor , timeagency , gwen_e_cooper , ask_janet , ask_exterminate , and ask_adeaddoctor ... and you were all AWESOME.  I looked up after a quiet day of cleaning to find my inbox filled with comments.  That had all come in in the space of 10 minutes.  The deluge!

I only wish I could have played longer, but sadly had to leave for a dinner with the boyfriend's parents. 

But, I tried to make this offer in the comments and I'll make it again here - for any in the Askworld who would like to read my paper on it, I'm happy to share!  Just PM me with your email, because I would absolutely adore comments, feedback, thoughts, discussion.  The only reason why I'm not posting it publicly to my journal is that I do hope to publish it at some point, and it's easier to do that if I don't post publicly here first.

and now, for the restaurant reviews?


so, dinner on tuesday night at Bacaro with my Comp Lit class was small plates of this:
- gorgonzola, date, walnut, orange honey crostini
- mascarpone, sun-dried tomato tapenade crostini
- cauliflower with chopotle aioli and mixed greens
- gruyere, blackforest ham & carmelized onion panini
- mozzarella, pastrami & tomato panini
- deconstructed BLG (niman ranch bacon, mixed greens, tomato)
- bacon, brie, and jalapeno pizza

Decent food, except that they had way too few servers for the crowd, and the kitchen gets really slow really fast.  The thing to write home about?  the cauliflower - OH MY GOD.  Best dish of the night and I'm really not a fan - but there was something about a perfectly cooked flavor filled cauliflower that just made me sit up and take notice. Atmospherically, it got so loud we were shouting for most of the meal.  And since this is the place that is our default department dinner location, I'm getting a little tired of the atmosphere.


dinner on thursday at Cobras y Matadors with two girlfriends, celebrating the end of the semester, was small plates of this:
- house cheese plate (blue, manchego, parmesan, brie, walnuts & toasts)
- eggplant tapenade
- spinach risotto
- bacon wrapped dates
- fried lentils (so good)
- socca cakes with honey and goat cheese
- socca cakes with cilantro sauce
and dessert was
- flan
- pot of chocolate with olive oil drizzle, fresh salt and crumble topping (and i know, it sounds weird, but SO good)

I love this place - it's within walking distance from the apartment, and we got there so early they hadn't even opened the dining room, but let us sit down anyway.  Since it's BYOB we had a fantastic bottle of wine.  And we got a little saucy and a little chatty and ended up walking back to hang out in our back yard.  Perfectly lovely evening. And my dining companions, who are downtown girls, decided all the waiters on our side of town are much much hotter.  The most surprising were the fried lentils - crunchy and done with little bits of parma ham or something in with them, they made me sit up and take notice.


aaaannndd, dinner on friday at Susan Feniger's (from top chef) Street with the boyfriend's parents was small plates of this:
- kaya toast (toasted bread spread thick with coconut jam; served with soft friend egg drizzled in dark soy and white pepper)
- paani puri (small tastes of spiced potato, chutneys, and sprouted beans enclosed in crispy puffs of dough dipped in yogurt-cilantro sauce)
- argentine ricotta noquis (italian - sheep's milk riccotta dumplings simmered with brown butter and lemon with celery root puree)
- spinach varenyky (small Ukrainian dumplings filled with spinach and a light layer of salted cheese; boiled and then pan fried served with sour cream, fried onions and lemon marmalade)
- thai rice noodles (flat pad see yu style rice noodles with Chinese broccoli, seasoned pork, tomato, mint, thai basil and chiles)
- blue ridge chicken and spoonbread dumplings (soft poached whole chicken picked off the bone, stewed with buttermilk corn dumplings with bacon cracklings, turnip greens and baby carrots)
- beef tenderloin schnitzel (thinly pounded, breaded and pan fried; severed with sweet and sour cabbage, parsnip puree, mustard cream sauce, and fried cornichon pickles)
- tatsutage fried chicken (marinated with soy, mirin, and sake; crispy fried rice in batter and topped with spicy kewpie mayonnaise sauce; served with pickled vegetable slaw and chilled soba noodles)
and for dessert
- turkish doughnuts (small spiced pastries fried and then simmered in cardamom rose syrup served with cream and rose hip jam)
- egyptian basbousa cake (lime soaked semolina cake with macertaed blueberries, lime curd and whipped cream)

Great company, decent conversation, yummy cocktails, and the service was totally sweet here - really informative wait staff, and they actually were attentive with the water even.  And there was a girl valet team, so yay for girls that drive cars!  And the food?  OH MY GODS insane.  It was the kind of food you want to eat when you're tired of eating all those conventional places - the kind of food that wakes you up, because you thought you'd gone to sleep seeing the same thing everywhere else.  Like the kaya toast - who pairs something that's basically coconut pudding on toast and dips it into soy?  But it's unbelievably tasty to have the savory and the sweet playing together.  Even the chicken & dumplings, which was the dish I was least looking forward to because it's basically dumplings in a kind of clear chicken broth with veggies, was unbelievably flavorful.

And since then?  I've done absolutely nothing.  Ha.  It is really nice to finally be on vacation except for paper rewriting / reworking.