Sunday, February 13, 2011

A week in review

Good morning, it's been a busy week of eating but not so much cooking. Traveled to Charlotte Tuesday and along the way got to visit my favorite fast food chain. Let's just say I'm glad that Chick-fil-A is not in Canada because I would go there every lunch. Their staff is courteous, menu simple, clean, and oh yeah everything in the south comes with sweet tea. Their well seasoned chicken-y bits, crisscross cut fries, and plentiful trans fat ladened sauces (although there is no nutritional information on them online so I'm not sure that's a fair assumption, guess it's only sauce, how bad can a couple of ounces of sugar, fat, and preservatives be...) can actually brighten my day. Sweet sweet chicken, those Christian's certainly know what they're doing, I give it a fil-A plus.

But I didn't come here to write about fast food. However, on a related note I flew down out of Buffalo on my way to Charlotte and if you're ever in western New York and have not tried it get a roast beef on a Weck; it's delicious and somewhat of a regional delicacy. Most restaurants I've been to in Buffalo serve it and I've had few that were terrible, although how hard is it to mess up roast beef on a kaiser. I may try to come up with my own variation on a weck, more to come on this topic. Canadian bacon on a weck! maybe...

Pulled off an early Valentines Friday and headed out of a nice romantic dinner at Sole restaurant in Waterloo ON. I like to try someplace new whenever we go out but after living in a city for nearly a decade you find a few places that are your favorites. Sole is a swanky Mediterranean style wine bar and restaurant with a moderately priced but exceptionally well thought out menu. Besides the exceptional decor and staff the food is amazing and I've never been disappointed when going there, save for two things. #1, their wine by the glass menu is fairly limited. I understand trying to up sell the bottle or half liter but really if there are two of us, one red drinker and one white, a bottle of wine is too much wine for just me... at a restaurant... when I have to drive... I can easily drink it to myself but do I want to pay restaurant prices just to drink a bottle of wine, no. #2, classic risotto is boring especially when your average customer doesn't eat a lot of risotto, to them it's just creamy rice, big deal. It would be great if they could spice up the risotto and do a creative Mediterranean take on risotto. I wouldn't normally beat up on the risotto except both my significant other and some random person seated near us both commented on it being unremarkable. (aside, I have a risotto recipe from a friend of mine that could be nominated for employ-meal of the month, I don't know what that means... post later today).

Enough meandering, meat and potatoes content starts now... Dinner for two went as follows, Lebanese chicken and lentil soup for the gentlemen and Caesar salad for the lady, steamed clams for the gentlemen and Promvimi veal scallopini for the lady. Not to dwell on the starters, they were enjoyable; pretty much everything we had expected. The mains were great, I love mussels or clams when they are prepared properly. From the menu "cherry stone clams, white wine, romesco sauce, pearl onions, black olives, cilantro, shards of manchego cheese, naan bread"... A great combination if ingredients, the onions were sweet and a wonderful contrast to the bitterness of the olives and cheese. I appreciated having naan bread to soak up as much of the romesco sauce as possible, more bread please. I was completely stuffed as the portion was more than adequate even though about 1/3 of my clams didn't open, I wasn't upset. A delicious meal and they were nice enough to offer it on the house because of the clams, super nice. The veal scallopini was also delicious, the bright colour of the the shaved asparagus and cherry tomato ragout certainly made it look appetizing. The veal was moist and tender without drowning in sauce. The risotto as mentioned above was kind of blah, it made a nice creamy base to the meal but on its own wouldn't have stood very tall. All in all a dinner worth returning for.

More to come...

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