Blue Valentine
I had an awesome Valentine's Day.
This morning I got snuggles from my favorite girl. Then I managed to clean and/or defrost all of the freezers in the house, which I've been meaning to do since October. That felt like a really great present to myself.
And then muffyjo arrived to spend the evening with someone she loves while J. and I headed out to dinner.
Somehow we've never been to Blue Ginger before and this seemed like a good night for it. Parking was relatively easy and we were seated right away. The dining room was less fabulous than I'd expected--crowded and with a very small-chain feeling to the decor.
We started with cocktails--Jason ordered the Blue Ginger Gimlet (vodka, fresh lime, house ginger syrup and a splash of sweet & sour) and I chose the Boston Bog (cranberries, honey and vodka infused with black tea and elderflower), but we ended up switching when I found mine overly iced and too sweet for my taste. Their mixologist definitely had Jason in mind when he designed the drinks; every cocktail had ginger, lychee and/or bourbon!
The food was fantastic. I started with the Hawaiian bigeye tuna poke with a crispy rice cake. The generous portion of tuna was fresh and tasty and the rice cake was a perfect complement to its texture. Jason had the cocktail of two shrimp tempura with wasabi dressing. That was good, but their tempura batter was smoother and heavier than I generally expect. For his main, Jason had the sake-miso marinated Alaskan butterfish with wasabi tobiko and soba sushi. The fish was divine--melt in your mouth texture and beautifully matched flavors, with the wasabi tobiko exploding between your teeth. I didn't try his soba sushi, but Jason felt that it worked very well. My own pan-roasted veal chop with Dijon-demiglace,
soba-bacon spaetzle, sake-braised cabbage and Asian pear chutney was one of the best pieces of veal I've ever eaten. It was incredibly tender and perfectly cooked. The generous portion of spaetzle and cabbage was very tasty and made an unusual and well-coordinated side, but I'm afraid the chutney was a little too sweet for my taste.
At this point the service, which had started out well and then run more and more slowly, finally ground to a halt. There had been a considerable wait between the quickly served starters and the mains, so it wasn't until we had been sitting at the empty table for quite some time that I finally flagged down another waitress. "Our waitress seems to have disappeared," I began and she said "Oh! Yes, she has. She was taken ill and had to go home. I'll be right with you." On her prompt return she started with "Now, where are you in the meal?" I understand that having a server bail in the middle of the Valentine's Day dinner rush has got to be a major hassle, but it really did seem that they could have handled that more smoothly.
We did go ahead and order dessert. There were too many things on the Lover's Dessert sampler for us to pass that up. A spoonful of lychee sorbet, a banana spring roll, jellied fruit sushi in a coconut wrapper, a ginger ice cream sandwich, spongecake topped with yuzu jelly, and a crunchy chocolate cup filled with caramel sauce. Conveniently, there was a small dish of chocolate sauce in the middle, so Jason could have that with his desserts and I didn't have to. All in all, a wonderful meal, but I hope to go back on a night when everyone in the world isn't out to dinner.
I've read a number of great posts about Valentine's Day today--people recognizing the love in their lives, celebrating the variety of places and people it comes from, and offering what they have to share with the world. On this day, like so many others, I recognize how blessed I am with the love of so many people. It's certainly a good thing that life isn't fair, because I could never deserve all of this. So I accept it with humility and wonder, learn and grow in it's light, and try to plough what I reap back into my relationships and passions and people. And so far that's working out pretty well.
Happy Valentine's Day.
This morning I got snuggles from my favorite girl. Then I managed to clean and/or defrost all of the freezers in the house, which I've been meaning to do since October. That felt like a really great present to myself.
And then muffyjo arrived to spend the evening with someone she loves while J. and I headed out to dinner.
Somehow we've never been to Blue Ginger before and this seemed like a good night for it. Parking was relatively easy and we were seated right away. The dining room was less fabulous than I'd expected--crowded and with a very small-chain feeling to the decor.
We started with cocktails--Jason ordered the Blue Ginger Gimlet (vodka, fresh lime, house ginger syrup and a splash of sweet & sour) and I chose the Boston Bog (cranberries, honey and vodka infused with black tea and elderflower), but we ended up switching when I found mine overly iced and too sweet for my taste. Their mixologist definitely had Jason in mind when he designed the drinks; every cocktail had ginger, lychee and/or bourbon!
The food was fantastic. I started with the Hawaiian bigeye tuna poke with a crispy rice cake. The generous portion of tuna was fresh and tasty and the rice cake was a perfect complement to its texture. Jason had the cocktail of two shrimp tempura with wasabi dressing. That was good, but their tempura batter was smoother and heavier than I generally expect. For his main, Jason had the sake-miso marinated Alaskan butterfish with wasabi tobiko and soba sushi. The fish was divine--melt in your mouth texture and beautifully matched flavors, with the wasabi tobiko exploding between your teeth. I didn't try his soba sushi, but Jason felt that it worked very well. My own pan-roasted veal chop with Dijon-demiglace,
soba-bacon spaetzle, sake-braised cabbage and Asian pear chutney was one of the best pieces of veal I've ever eaten. It was incredibly tender and perfectly cooked. The generous portion of spaetzle and cabbage was very tasty and made an unusual and well-coordinated side, but I'm afraid the chutney was a little too sweet for my taste.
At this point the service, which had started out well and then run more and more slowly, finally ground to a halt. There had been a considerable wait between the quickly served starters and the mains, so it wasn't until we had been sitting at the empty table for quite some time that I finally flagged down another waitress. "Our waitress seems to have disappeared," I began and she said "Oh! Yes, she has. She was taken ill and had to go home. I'll be right with you." On her prompt return she started with "Now, where are you in the meal?" I understand that having a server bail in the middle of the Valentine's Day dinner rush has got to be a major hassle, but it really did seem that they could have handled that more smoothly.
We did go ahead and order dessert. There were too many things on the Lover's Dessert sampler for us to pass that up. A spoonful of lychee sorbet, a banana spring roll, jellied fruit sushi in a coconut wrapper, a ginger ice cream sandwich, spongecake topped with yuzu jelly, and a crunchy chocolate cup filled with caramel sauce. Conveniently, there was a small dish of chocolate sauce in the middle, so Jason could have that with his desserts and I didn't have to. All in all, a wonderful meal, but I hope to go back on a night when everyone in the world isn't out to dinner.
I've read a number of great posts about Valentine's Day today--people recognizing the love in their lives, celebrating the variety of places and people it comes from, and offering what they have to share with the world. On this day, like so many others, I recognize how blessed I am with the love of so many people. It's certainly a good thing that life isn't fair, because I could never deserve all of this. So I accept it with humility and wonder, learn and grow in it's light, and try to plough what I reap back into my relationships and passions and people. And so far that's working out pretty well.
Happy Valentine's Day.