Maybe you’ve noticed (if there is a you; if so, thanks for reading!) that I haven’t been posting here much.  At all.  Mostly, I blame it on not eating out a ton, which seems to be a natural result of having a two-year-old.  Not that I don’t eat out, I just don’t as frequently as I used to.  And when I do eat out, it takes all of my spare time to do that, so I’m a lot less likely to write about it.  So if there’s anyone who reads this, I’m sorry.  I really do plan on posting here again—it just might be a while.

We ate at Restaurant Eve once before, maybe two months after moving to Virginia.  It was our first fine dining experience after the move, and it had been long enough since we’d eaten at a quality restaurant that we wondered if it was really that good, or if we’d just been deprived of good food for too long.

Monday night we found out: it was really that good.

The restaurant is comprised of two parts: the Bistro and the Tasting Room.  Ten months ago, on a dark Friday night in October, we ate in the Bistro; all I really remember is that we had our first babysitter in Virginia, I had sweetbreads, and the food was great.

In August, however, at 7:30 in the evening, the light still streams in; the restaurant, though large by New York standards, seats a relatively small handful of diners.  I had made reservations (and changed the date) the old-fashioned way: Restaurant Eve has chosen to forgo whatever added capacity they could fill using OpenTable in favor of the more personal telephone reservations.  (For the record, I love OpenTable, but the staff at Restaurant Eve is so charmingly nice that it’s not a significant imposition to speak with them.)  The restaurant wasn’t cramped, but it was well-filled, even for a Monday evening.

In the Tasting Room, a diner can choose between a five-course tasting menu and a nine-course tasting menu.  If you choose the five-course, you have to choose between five or six dishes for each of the five courses.  (If you’re braver, and your stomach more voluminous, the nine-course menu is essentially set; you do get a choice somewhere around the fourth course, however.)

I don’t remember all of our food choices, but they were all excellent.  I had a virgin grilled-lemonade with bay leaf to drink, and Jamie had a virgin cantaloupe martini.  The courses follow roughly a creation theme, drawing lightly from Genesis and heavily from French cuisine.  I know that among my courses were hamachi, quail and heirloom beets, lobster, and a delicious cheese tartlet with onion and bacon.  Jamie’s first course included house-made boudin noir, while other courses included apricots, fresh peaches, and corn ice cream.

The high point for me, though, was off-menu: before the final course, they brought a palate-cleanser.  Rather than a mint- or sorbet-based bite, though, we cleansed our palates with buttermilk panna cotta with a blackberry glacé and a half blackberry on top.  The panna cotta was silky, sweet but with a slightly sour bite.

Last year, we celebrated our anniversary at Le Bernardine.  The food was, of course, proficient and technically excellent.  The food wasn’t, however, any better than Restaurant Eve’s (which is to say, in truth, it was not as good).  The true contrast, though, was in service: at Le Bernardine, the service seemed almost a caricature of stereotypical French/New York.  The waiter barely spoke to us, and seemed determined to put us in our place (wherever our place was).  At Restaurant Eve, the staff was as sunny as the evening, all smiles and explanations of the dishes that had just arrived.  Our deserts featured gold-stenciled “Happy Anniversary”s on the chocolate sheets.  And when we left, all was right in the world. 

As a side note, apropos of nothing at all, the couple sitting at the table next to ours was a Columbia Law alumnus, preceding me by about a decade.  He’s also a tax attorney, and they were celebrating their (13^th) anniversary. 

Also: our little girl was asleep in her crib when we got home.

Finally: Cathal Armstrong, the chef and proprietor of Restaurant Eve, is also the owner of Eamann’s.  So he’s easily two for two, mastering the high- and the low-brow.

Jamie was watching some Kevin Bacon as a stockbroker-turned-bike-messenger-turned-stockbroker-again movie from the 80s when I got down from putting Jane in her crib.  Maybe watching is the wrong word—the TV was on for noise as she folded clothes.  But there’s nothing on at 1:30 on a Saturday, which may be why Kevin Bacon was on.

Eventually, when we noticed the movie was still on, she told me I could change the channel.  The problem was, it was 1:30 on a Saturday.  I finally stopped on a PBS cooking show, as I finished up the week’s menu.  I picked five meals, plus fish for that night.  I couldn’t find a fish I wanted, so I figured I’d do something with whatever Whole Foods had to offer.

And as I was getting up, I glanced at the TV, and was transfigured.  They were making a gorgeous salmon dish, one that used chopped mint.  And I’m a sucker for mint.  I haven’t done salmon in a while, and never a salmon steak.  And salmon is fish, so it was perfect.  It was a simple dish, but I didn’t move until the next recipe.  We had it tonight.  It’s a perfectly springy dish; we had it with lemon spinach couscous, but it would great with quinoa, too.  Below, the recipe.  (I meant to include a photo, too, but we were running late, so we ate rather than photograph, and were still fifteen minutes late.)

Mint-rubbed Salmon Steaks with Zucchini

For the rub:

One or two clove of garlic, smashed and minced

A handful of mint leaves (say 1/3 cup), chopped

A tablespoon or so of dried oregano

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

For the vegetables:

Two zucchinis, halved and cut into quarter-inch portions

A handful of grape tomatoes, halved

4 green onions, cut into ½ inch sections

Preheat oven to 425

Rub both sides of salmon steak with half of the rub.  Put salmon in an oven-proof skillet, then in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes.

While the salmon cooks, heat olive oil in another skillet.  Sauté the zucchini for a couple minutes.  Add tomatoes, green onions, reserved rub.  Continue to cook for 1 minute.

Plate nicely—I divided the plate into three parts, the couscous on a third of the plate, vegetables on another third, and salmon on the final third.  The green, red, and pink (of the salmon) look great.  Enjoy!

Once in a blue moon I’ll eat fried fish.  Trying to eat authentic Southern food, I had fried catfish in
South Carolina a couple years ago.  I had the fish and chips at Norma’s (fried lobster and Chilean sea bass before I knew Chilean sea bass was in danger of being overfished).  And I always remember, when the fishiness and batter overwhelms what should be a light and flaky treat, and when I feel that heaviness inside my stomach, that I really don’t like fried fish.

Except at Eamann’s, A Dublin Chipper.  It’s our new fast food restaurant of choice.  See, the fish is fresh, the batter light.  You can taste the sweet, light cod (they also offer a fish of the day, catfish the day I got it), which can be cut with the plastic fork they give you.

That’s right, a plastic fork.  No plates, either.  Your food comes out in a big paper bag, and the fish and the fries are in smaller wax paper bags, pretty much the way any fast food place would give you your food.  (Interestingly enough, Eamonn’s is the brother restaurant to Restaurant Eve, a really good French place around the corner.  Eve was named after the chef’s daughter, Eamonn’s after his son.)

There are maybe four large tables in the restaurant, plus a couple stools at a bar in the back.  Unless your group is really big, you’ll share a table with complete strangers.  You might speak to them (especially if they have an 2-year-old who’s interested in your 18-month-old), but once the food comes, it’s all about the fish.

The best part, in my opinion, are the dipping sauces.  You’ve got your standard tartar sauce, although by “standard,” I mean unlike any tartar sauce I’ve tried.  They also have a curry sauce, a tapenade, and others, all made fresh at Restaurant Eve and brought over daily.

Jamie disagrees with me, though.  She thinks the donut holes (or “Dough Balls,” as they’re called on the menu) are the stand-out item on the menu.

As a warning, everything Eamonn’s serves is fried.  You can get fried candy bars for dessert (we haven’t yet).  They offer a burger, but it comes bunless.  Instead, it’s battered and fried.  We also haven’t tried the burger yet.  Frankly, why bother?  The fish is so good, it renders anything else (except maybe the Dough Balls) (oh, and the fries are pretty good, too, dipped in any of the sauces or the malt vinegar they have at every table) superfluous.

We’ve eaten there three times now.  And I don’t even like fast food.

It’s probably not fair to review a restaurant more than two weeks after I ate there—by now I’ve forgotten the subtleties that made it what it was.  So consider this a broad-brush painting, a placeholder until I eat there again.

Jamie and Jane got back from
South Carolina on Tuesday, so she thought all three of us should go out for my birthday Wednesday.  We didn’t want to eat at Bertucci’s, a pretty good pizza chain in Old Town, and our usual family destination, and I didn’t know what was and what wasn’t family friendly, so we decided to drive to Del Ray, a neighborhood just north of Old Town where, we’ve heard, everybody knows everybody else and there’s a happening downtown, and see what we could find.

What we found was the Evening Star Café.  I’d heard of it,[1] but decided against it because it didn’t seem, well, child-oriented.  But we saw a mom and a little girl not much bigger than Jane, so we went in.

Our timing was impeccable.  A booth had just opened up, and within five minutes we were seated.  Jamie and I ordered lemonade, with a milk for Jane, and then got into the menu.  I started with the cured salmon panzanella, while Jamie and Jane split the smoked duck spring rolls.  As an entrée, I had the seared sea scallops and Jamie had the salmon.

The verdict: we’d go back.  The food is legitimately good, but the restaurant was loud enough that Jane didn’t disturb anybody.  She wasn’t the only small child,  but we didn’t notice any of the others.

My only substantive complaint—the portions are too big.  The best restaurants I’ve eaten at perfectly size their portions so that I’m full, but not stuffed, at the end of three courses.  At the Evening Star Café, I could barely finish the appetizer and entrée, and neither of us had room for dessert.  A small complaint, I know, but the food was good enough, and presented will enough, that it deserved a better portion size.

[1] I like the restaurant’s name for obvious reasons.

After several hours at the EdVenture Children’s Museum in Columbia, SC, we were hungry. (A side note, not relevant to food, but does an Ernst Hemingway-themed Cuban Cigar night seem like the fund-raised you’d choose for a children’s museum? Me either.) We’d played on a toddler-sized boat, gone down a slide in a giant person, played in Africa and India, milked a plastic cow, slid down a slide in the bubble-snow room, and played a keyboard and musical hopscotch. What we didn’t do was eat lunch. No wonder, around 2:00 pm, it wasn’t just the 15-month-old ready to melt down.

Because we were in two cars (Jamie’s mom went with us to the museum), and because we were ravenous, we didn’t want to go too far; we drove up Gervais Street about five minutes and then parked. There were a couple seedy-looking diners right by us, but we decided to walk up Gervais instead. There had to be something, we figured.

We passed far fewer restaurants than we expected, and the one that looked promising was closed for a private event. We went in when we hit Mellow Mushroom Pizza Bakers, but our appetites precluded the wait, so we crossed the street and walked down the other side.

We were resigned to seedy diner food (or maybe Chick Fil-A) when we passed a menu on a placard just off the sidewalk. The menu looked handwritten and was for the Motor Supply Company Bistro. The food looked pretty good, so we went in.

Four stars for service this place does not get. Nobody came to greet or seat us, so we had to fetch a guy who looked like he was working. He told us that the kitchen closed in 15 minutes, then proceeded to not seat us. When we did get a table, nobody came to take our order. (Although, in the restaurant’s defense, it looked like the wait staff was just turning over, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense since the restaurant closed at 2:30 and dinner didn’t start until 6:00. Still, when our waitress finally appeared, she was very good and very friendly.)

The food, though. I’m always nervous about Southern restaurants; every time I order fried fish, I remember that I don’t like fried food. But the food was remarkable. I had a salad with a grilled Tilapia fillet topped with a spicy cilantro sauce. Oh, and edamame. Jane loved the fish and edamame, and even ate some of the salad greens. (I ate what she didn’t which, of course, was most of the salad.) Jamie had her crab cake; the bite I stole was very good. I believe Jo had pasta of some sort, and I similarly believe I enjoyed the bite or two I took, but for two reasons, I’m not sure. One is that I’m writing this three weeks after eating there (life got in the way for a little while). The other is that I can’t consult the menu. The menu changes every day, depending on the available ingredients and, I assume, the whims of the chef.

Tom Peters, the executive chef, has been at Motor Supply Company Bistro for about 18 months. The restaurant is about 15 years old. I don’t know how it was before Mr. Peters, but he has taken it in a good direction. Next time I’m in Columbia, I’m going to take time to play in the EdVenture Children’s Museum and eat at Motor Supply Company Bistro.

Although if I had it to do over, I’d probably go more than 15 minutes before the kitchen closed.

Okay, so it turns out I’d only done two restaurant reviews before starting omnivorous.  Here’s the second.  (Note that, as much as we liked it at the time, we’ve since eaten at Babbo.

I Still Like Food, posted Wednesday, August 25, 2004 (notable for being the day after Jamie’s birthday).

The Fireman Hospitality Group is really good—I signed up for their “Birthday Club,” and now every August and March we get a coupon in the mail good for a free entrée (of up to $35 in value) at any of their five restaurants in New York. I’d eaten at the Redeye Grill a couple times, and it was a really good seafood place. So yesterday, armed with our coupon, Jamie and I decided to celebrate her birthday at one of their restaurants.

Because the Redeye Grill is mostly seafood, because Jamie wasn’t in the mood for seafood, and because it was her birthday, we decided to try the Trattoria Dell’Arte (which, it turns out, is right next door to the Redeye). Jamie wanted a sidewalk seat, which I was hesitant about on Seventh Avenue and 57th. It turns out that 57th is just far enough north that you don’t have the vestiges of Times Square traffic. Plus the restaurant encircles its outdoor seating with tall planters, creating a definitive wall (and the bus that was parked on the side of the street for most of our meal also helped lower what noise level there may have been). Still, I could see Central Park from where I was sitting, and Jamie could see the other patrons. And Carnegie Hall was right across the street.

The wait staff was spectacular. Our waiter gave us suggestions, checked up on us, but allowed us to eat in peace. And the food was wonderful: it’s an Italian place, and I didn’t want to waste my purchase on a non-pasta dish, but decided on the Filetto di Tonno—tuna on an artichoke-lentil salad. The presentation alone almost kept me from eating, but the taste was even better than the presentation. I asked for medium, but it came out done. It’s been a long time since I’ve had fully-cooked tuna, and I’m not sure which I like better. This tuna was crusted in something spicy, it flaked, and it was delicious. And the salad—grilled carrot slices, lentils, artichoke hearts, some funky vinaigrette; nothing to complain about there.

When Jamie saw my tuna next to her Spaghettoni Gricia, she was disappointed. She needn’t have been—her spaghetti came in a roasted red pepper puree. She ate every bite of her dinner, except for the two or three that I stole. The next recipe we need to get (after lime-rosemary sorbet) is this roasted red pepper puree.

We debated over whether to get dessert there or have me make it while Jamie was at a dance rehearsal. And then the waiter brought the dessert tray to our table. You can’t say no to a dessert tray. I had the chocolate cheesecake with Oreo crust and Jamie had the lemon crème brulée tart. Only when the waiter left, she told me I’d taken what she wanted. I told her I’d trade, because she’d actually taken what I kind of wanted, but when the desserts came, she traded back again. We were worried, after the chocolate ganache disappointment (admittedly, a minor disappointment), that the crème brulée wouldn’t seem so hot, but it was amazingly refreshing and good. And my cheesecake was rich—maybe a little too rich given how much I’d eaten, but delicious nonetheless. Both were topped with cream and raspberries. I ate until the point where one more bite would make me throw up. Jamie ate her whole dessert (again, excepting the two bites I stole from her).

And then, to top off a near-perfect dinner, Trattoria Dell’Arte applied the birthday certificate to my (far more expensive) entrée, no “of equal or lesser value” there.

Before there was omnivorous (long before there was omnivorous), there was LapDog, my first attempt at food-, etc.-, blogging.  I thought, given the new digs, that I’d move those posts over here as archival material.  This post–”I Like Food”–was my first ever foray into the world of food writing.

I Like Food, posted Thursday, August 5, 2004 (notable for being two days after our second anniversary).

I dreamed last night about food. Which makes sense, really—at the end of our dinner, the Gramercy Tavern gave us each a cupcake-sized coffee cake to take home for breakfast, the fifth of five surprise servings in our dinner. But I’m already ahead of myself.

I’ve wanted to eat again at the Gramercy Tavern for the last year; I remembered it serving not-too-large portions that filled me up perfectly, portions (in my experience) unmatched in quality. I’d forgotten the amazing limeade, though. But I’m still ahead of myself.

Jamie and I were a little nervous—we’d never eaten together at a really nice (read: expensive) restaurant. Would the staff be able to see through us? Would we faux pas our way through dinner? Unfounded fears, as it turned out—the staff was unfailingly and unflinchingly polite, no snootiness or faux pretension. But they were good—new silverware after every course; when Jamie needed to find the restrooms, she was led, not pointed; Jamie’s water was poured from the left hand, after which the pitcher switched to the right to pour mine (we were sitting at adjacent sides of a corner table); not one person’s face lost its smile (Jamie: “Do you think they get sick of smiling?”).

The interior is dark, but not too dark, a classy look without too much adornment (although behind me was a framed pencil sketch of Bugs Bunny, signed with a name I don’t recognize). The tables are well-spaced, and the restaurant’s wood-burning stove lends a warm, sweet smell to the room.

But all of the above is secondary—tertiary, even—to the food. Jamie ordered a limeade, I a lemonade. That the limeade was better in no way impugns the lemonade—both were strong without being distasteful, sweet but not treacley. Had I wanted treacley, though, we were also brought a glass sugar water. Then came the first of the five surprises: something (duck, maybe?) on a thin garlicky toast, with a mint leaf on top. Jamie melted. Then a small homemade pasta with walnut and peas—the sweetest, crunchiest peas I’ve ever tasted. The appetizers were superb—mine a tuna tartare with lemon vinaigrette and tomatoes that sweetly melted, Jamie’s the roasted sweetbreads with bacon, onions, & c.

For dinner, I had the monkfish, Jamie the roasted sirloin of beef. (Actually, if I keep telling you what was on everything, I’ll just be repeating the menu. So take a look at the menu here.) The monkfish was tender, melting in my mouth, but the sirloin also melted, done medium, with plenty of pink but no blood.

After the sour cream-raspberry sorbet palate-cleanser, it was on to dessert. Jamie had the milk chocolate ganache tart, with which she was disappointed (here, “disappointed” meaning she wasn’t blown away to the degree she expected). It turns out to be, essentially, a chocolate molten cake, and I make chocolate molten cakes about twice a month, using bittersweet rather than milk chocolate. Had she not been accustomed to the richer chocolate, though, she would have found it amazing.

I, on the other hand, had the cannoli filled with crème fraîche, with raspberries, lime sorbet, and crystallized rosemary. It was sour, powerful, and unexpected. And now I have to see if I can make a powerful lime sorbet flavored with rosemary. I tasted the combination the whole way home. It was the surprise Jamie’s dessert would have been if we didn’t do molten chocolate cake on such a regular basis (although in the interest of full disclosure, crème brulée has been more common of late than molten chocolate cake—they’re more alike than you might think). Then the after-dinner bite-sized surprises (a soft gumdrop-y mango candy and a white chocolate tartlet), and this morning’s breakfast. And then on to the dreams and breakfast, and now, the taste of the coffee cake lingering in my mouth, I have finally finished this year’s Gramercy Tavern trip.

At 5:15 pm yesterday, Jamie couldn’t understand how a restaurant could be worth what we were about to pay; at 8:00, neither of us could imagine eating anywhere else. Unfortunately, our anniversary only comes once a year so, unless somebody wants to fund us, we have to figure out quickly how to return to the real world of food.

Jamie and I were going to the temple on Valentine’s Day, a too-rare treat now that we have a daughter and have to face Beltway traffic.  Roy and Michelle had celebrated a couple days earlier, and had offered to watch Jane for us.

And then it snowed.  Just a couple inches—New York would have barely noticed, but it was enough to make the federal government open two hours late Valentine’s Day.  And to close the temple.  So Wednesday morning I searched OpenTable.com to see if anybody had a table open for 7:00 that night.  And, wouldn’t you know it, 100 King had room.

I was hesitant.  I like 100 King, but that would be our third time eating there.  And we like to try new places.  On the other hand, they had a table available at 7:00 that night, and that night was Valentine’s Day.  So I made the reservation.

100 King has the best service, bar none, that I have ever experienced.  Even if their food were mediocre (it’s not—more on that later), it would be worth it for the good vibe you get.  The maitre d’ recognized us from our previous visit, a month earlier.  We got a great seat on the second floor by a window overlooking King Street.  After the meal, we couldn’t find our coats (it was a CHILLY night, and there were at least three or four coat racks in service that night), so another gentleman, who was neither our server nor the maitre d’, helped us find them.  Everybody smiled.  When we didn’t order any wine, our waiter offered us each of glass of champagne.  On the house.  Apparently on the theory that nobody should be without a glass of wine on Valentine’s Day.  (We don’t drink, so we didn’t take him up on his offer.)

And then there was the food.  The menu is standard French bistro, except that it’s not so standard.  Jamie and I rarely loved the food at the bistros we ate at in New York.  In our experience, there tends to be something—maybe a reverse je ne sais quoi—unappetizing about bistro food.  It’s too heavy, or greasy, or something.  100 King manages to avoid whatever it is that I usually dislike about bistros, and what’s left is simply wonderful.

The restaurant offered a special pre-fixe Valentine’s Day menu; the lamb sounded wonderful, but we are not huge lobster fans, and the appetizer choice was lobster.  So I started with a great duck confit, while Jamie enjoyed her French onion soup.  (She makes a great French onion soup, but it is so labor- and time-intensive that, in a post-daughter world, it makes a lot more sense as a restaurant, rather than a home-cooked, dish.)

I had a deconstructed lamb pot pie for my main course.  The lamb wasn’t Farrah Olivia’s, but it was a good comfort-food dish.  Jamie’s scallops were cooked perfectly, however.

For dessert, I ordered the bread pudding that Jamie wanted, and Jamie ordered the chocolate gateau that I didn’t want to want.  (I make a mean molten chocolate cake, which is what the gateau is, and I’d had it last time we ate there.)  After a couple bites each, we traded.  The chocolate gateau is surrounded by a basil-mint sauce that is just strong enough not to be overpowered by the chocolate.  The only herb better than basil in a dessert is rosemary, but rosemary wouldn’t have worked as nicely in this dish.

After a near-perfect Valentine’s Day dinner (did I mention that it’s the first time we’ve gone out on Valentine’s Day since we’ve been married?), we braved the freezing wind to get back to our car and back to our little girl.

We got off to a bad start.  Not just a bad start—an I’m never going to speak to you again and hope you go down in flames start.  Seriously, I was beyond unhappy.  But, after a couple weeks without any contact, I thought I’d try again, just one more time.

Thank goodness I did.

Our story begins, as stories are wont to begin, during Restaurant Week.  At about 6:33 pm on the Tuesday of Restaurant Week, actually, about 18 minutes after our reservation.  (Our excuse for being late?  Babysitting problems, of course.)  We were told when we arrived that they could only hold our table for 15 minutes, but we were welcome to eat at the bar if we wanted.  We stared at the menu for another 15 minutes at the bar before deciding that we were too angry to enjoy the food.  (We ended up at 100 King, an excellent French Bistro with remarkably friendly service and very, very good food.)

But my bus takes me by Farrah Olivia by Moreau every morning and evening, and how could I pass up an African-French-American meal?  So when our neighbor volunteered to watch Jane the Thursday before Valentine’s Day, we decided to celebrate love a week early and give Farrah a second chance.

The service is impeccably polite, from the maitre d’ to the server to the buser.  The dining room is classic, if small—it’s roughly the size of a
New York restaurant, but with half the tables (I didn’t count, but Jamie thinks there were about 20).

The meal started with bread—a white and a raisin—with four types of spreads: a mayonnaise with an aftertaste of horseradish, an excellent butter, a sundried tomato spread, and something green that looked like pesto, but was a good deal earthier.  The mayonnaise was the best of the four, but the butter was also beyond belief.

For the evening’s amuse bouche, the chef sent a sip of curried clam chowder.  The chowder was creamy and smooth, and whetted our desire for more.

Jamie was intrigued by the concept of bacon powder, so she ordered scallops dusted with same; I had the blackeyed pea fritters with fried tomatoes and tail pepper honey.  Sure enough, Jamie’s scallops came with a pile of red dust, and I had three balls of blackeyed pea fritters.  The appetizers presaged the meal to follow in three major ways:

(1)   the food was amazing (keep this in mind—you don’t want to hear me use superlatives to describe each dish, so I’m using it here);

(2)   he enjoys both sweet and savory powders in addition to the artistically smeared sauces on each plate (and we did too); and

(3)   every dish (except, thankfully, dessert) balanced sweet and savory aspects.

For example, my white tuna (which turns out, probably, to be escolar) came with “citrus caramel,” a sweet citrusy flan that perfectly complemented the fish, as well as a slightly sweet, slightly peppery crème anglaise.  (And Jamie’s lamb was perfect, a far cry from the not-bad lamb stir-fry I’d prepared a couple days earlier.)

The only note that wasn’t perfect the whole evening was Jamie’s dessert—the pineapple cake was merely very good, largely because it is not pineapple season, and the fruit, in spite of being grilled, could have been slightly sweeter.

The real surprise of the evening, though, was the cheese course.  I never get cheese, but Jamie convinced me (as I drooled), and we had Virginia sheep’s-milk cheese.  Wow.  A hard, but creamy and smooth, chees, with bread, granola, grapes, and a caramel sauce.  If every cheese course is like Farrah Olivia’s
Piedmont, I may be done with dessert.

Or not.