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Anniversary Dinner!
Sep. 24th, 2003 07:00 pmOkay, so it's taken me a couple of days to recover! ;-) Seriously, I barely made it to school Tuesday morning, and I'm a real morning person, so that never happens. Went to bed at 10 last night, too.
Our first anniversary dinner was nothing short of spectacular. See, one of my close friends is married to one of the most talented up-and-coming chefs in NYC; Andrew is at Cafe Boulud, which is Daniel Boulud (big deal celebrity chef)'s second restaurant. I'd eaten there once before; M. hadn't had the chance yet.
So instead of exchanging gifts, we decided to treat ourselves to a really special meal. We got there, and when we were seated, the maitre d' mentioned that he understood we were celebrating an anniversary.
After we'd ordered, we were approached about "whether we'd like the kitchen opened up to us" -- I was confused, because I thought the middle of the dinner rush was probably not the time to take a tour, but what it meant was that we were being offered the special tasting menu. Then we were asked the same thing about the wines.
From start to finish, it was the most extraordinary meal! There were all sorts of small seafood dishes, and M. got a bit of rabbit stew which he said was incredible. One thing I'm noting for my own future reference is the extraordinary squash soup. The wines were also spectacular, including without a doubt the best Chardonnay either of us had ever tasted -- both of us tend to prefer red but this was unbelievable! (It was called something like Canape; we're going to have to track down a couple of bottles for our special-occasion store.)
M. says the chef he ran front-of-house for back in England cooked on a comparable level, but even the few really special meals we've had in this country (Red Cat, Parrish & Co.) have been nothing like. He was appalled the next day when he went in to work all excited and none of the managers at Evil Chain Restaurant had even heard of Cafe Boulud. No, dear, I said. They're corporate managers, not food people. They could as easily be running a Home Depot.
Hopefully this lights his fire to move on because he's clearly got a passion for fine food; I'm living proof that working at something you care about makes life so much better . . .
Our first anniversary dinner was nothing short of spectacular. See, one of my close friends is married to one of the most talented up-and-coming chefs in NYC; Andrew is at Cafe Boulud, which is Daniel Boulud (big deal celebrity chef)'s second restaurant. I'd eaten there once before; M. hadn't had the chance yet.
So instead of exchanging gifts, we decided to treat ourselves to a really special meal. We got there, and when we were seated, the maitre d' mentioned that he understood we were celebrating an anniversary.
After we'd ordered, we were approached about "whether we'd like the kitchen opened up to us" -- I was confused, because I thought the middle of the dinner rush was probably not the time to take a tour, but what it meant was that we were being offered the special tasting menu. Then we were asked the same thing about the wines.
From start to finish, it was the most extraordinary meal! There were all sorts of small seafood dishes, and M. got a bit of rabbit stew which he said was incredible. One thing I'm noting for my own future reference is the extraordinary squash soup. The wines were also spectacular, including without a doubt the best Chardonnay either of us had ever tasted -- both of us tend to prefer red but this was unbelievable! (It was called something like Canape; we're going to have to track down a couple of bottles for our special-occasion store.)
M. says the chef he ran front-of-house for back in England cooked on a comparable level, but even the few really special meals we've had in this country (Red Cat, Parrish & Co.) have been nothing like. He was appalled the next day when he went in to work all excited and none of the managers at Evil Chain Restaurant had even heard of Cafe Boulud. No, dear, I said. They're corporate managers, not food people. They could as easily be running a Home Depot.
Hopefully this lights his fire to move on because he's clearly got a passion for fine food; I'm living proof that working at something you care about makes life so much better . . .
