He cooked me dinner on Friday night – baked salmon with mustard sauce, orzo and salad. I made the salad, which doesn’t count as cooking, and I was responsible for the orzo. But you can’t really count boiling small pasta in chicken broth as cooking. Can you?
On Saturday we went to a party for a friend of my family’s, and the only thing consumed there was too much wine. At least for me – B was fine.
But the big day was Sunday. Our first Valentine’s Day together – hopefully, the first of many. I didn’t do any of the planning for Valentine’s Day. B did it all. It started with brunch at Acquitaine on Tremont Street in the South End of Boston. (Actually, it started with the bottle of ginger ale he bought me at 7-Eleven on the way into town.) We each got a Bloody Mary (little hair of the dog, if you know what I mean – too much wine for sure) and started with a bowl of fresh fruit and an order of pommes frites. If the Bloody Mary didn’t help me turn the corner, B was thinking the French fries might do the trick. Truthfully, the drink and the fries got me half way there. For our meals, I got the Eggs Benedict (which came with brunch potatoes, which were not mentioned on the menu – otherwise, I wouldn’t have let B order the pommes frites). B got a spinach and feta omelet, which was accompanied by a cinnamon bun. We shared a side of applewood smoked bacon. (I ordered it, thinking greasy bacon would definitely do the trick. It didn’t – B ate most of it.) B cleaned his plate, and I ate about 1/2 of one of the Eggs Benedict. I was a little put off by the texture of the poached egg (it looked frothy) and I have determined that I don’t like Hollandaise sauce. I just asked B what he thought of the cinnamon bun and his response was “it’s a cinnamon bun, it did the job.” Okay then.
I’ve been to Acquitaine before. It’s a good restaurant. Hangover aside, it was not the best brunch I’ve ever had but I think they were struggling with the Valentine’s Day crowd. The place was absolutely mobbed – the hostess was literally turning people away if they didn’t have a reservation.
After brunch we headed over to the Institute of Contemporary Art. Unbeknownst to us, only one of the galleries was open because the other one was getting set up for a new installation. So that took us about a half hour (when we had three hours to kill before the curtain was due to rise on the play we were going to see). So we grabbed coffee for him and tea for me at the Water Café, a Wolfgang Puck cafeteria. Yes, further evidence that Wolfgang Puck is perhaps the biggest celebrity chef sell out of all time. Don’t even debate it with me.
We took our drinks outside and walked around the harbor. No food stories to tell here, but the sea air completed the job that the Bloody Mary and pommes frites could not. I had officially turned a corner!
Back to the car we go, and off to the Back Bay where we were due to see Legacy of Light at the Lyric Stage Theatre at 3:00 p.m. Of course, we got there a little before 2:00. So, we decided to go to Post 390 for a drink before the show. Post 390 is a new restaurant owned by the same people who own Grill 23 (one of my favorite places). I have had drinks and appetizers at Post 390, but I’ve yet to eat there. Its concept is upscale American comfort food. We grabbed a seat at the bar – very cozy place, beautifully decorated with an awesome gas fire place that I wish we were sitting closer to as I wore a sleeveless dress in February – and ordered some cocktails. I decided to play it safe with another Bloody Mary, and B opted for a gin and tonic. I needed a little more hydration than vodka alone was going to give me, so mix it with tomato juice and horseradish I did.
We only had time for one drink before the play. The play, Legacy of Light, is hard to describe in a sentence or two, but I will tell you it was funny, interesting and recommended. Check it out.
After the play, we had to head over to Harvard Square for dinner. We had 6:00 reservations at Upstairs on the Square. By this point, I’m starving. Corner turned, and appetite raging. We had about 45 minutes to get to Harvard Square after the play. We get back to B’s car to find a parking ticket on it. Apparently, that amazing on-street parking we scored was in a handicapped zone. Oops. As if the day wasn’t expensive enough!
Naturally, at this point, I’m convinced we won’t get to Cambridge in time and I’m panicking that they are going to cancel our reservation. B is completely relaxed and thinking I’m crazy. You see, I think everything is going to take twice as much time as it will and B thinks it will take half the time. This results in me always being early and B always being late. Hopefully we will eventually balance each other out.
On our way to Harvard Square, we make a pit stop. B had ordered me a dozen long stem roses from Winston Flowers, and he needed to pick them up. They are absolutely the most amazingly beautiful roses I’ve ever seen… Check them out!
Okay, the roses have nothing to do with food, but I had to digress for a moment.
It is my experience that restaurants consistently fall down on the busiest days, particularly New Years Eve and Valentine’s Day. I thought Upstairs on the Square had the right idea with their prix fixe menu – limited number of dishes available will allow for faster table turnover, and fewer kitchen screw ups.
Not so much.
The food was good, don’t get me wrong. But it was a two hour meal – and it was only four courses! We opted for the wine pairings menu – three of the courses would be accompanied by a glass of wine for an extra $50 per person. Had I not been starving to death, I probably would have thought “three drinks for $50 is ridiculously unreasonable.” Naturally, that occurred to me during the third course and the second glass of wine. Another thing that was weird… they had available one glass of red, one glass of white, and a champagne for each of the courses. When you made your selection for each choice, they didn’t automatically pick the most appropriate glass of wine – they asked you what you wanted. Huh.
Fortunately, our waiter was really good and he did make recommendations, but it didn’t appear that it was set up that way. They also had the tendency to bring out the wine well before the food came out, which kind of defeated the purpose of the pairings menu.
Now on to the food…
For my first course I got the oysters and ahi tuna, accompanied by a wine that was described as “chardonnay like.” I was a little turned off by the menu’s description of the oysters as “porn star oysters” but I was even more turned off by the description of the wine. It was so crazy sweet – much more like a dessert wine than a chardonnay. B got the beet risotto with beef Carpaccio. Both dishes were good, but the wines did not work with them. (B decided to go for the “chardonnay like” white instead of the pinot noir that was offered. He regretted it.)
There was one salad available for the second course – basically an endive salad with horseradish. And lots of horseradish. More horseradish than endive. There was no wine to accompany this course. And for $50, I think they could have sprung for a glass. But maybe they figured with all that horseradish we would only need water.
For the third course, I got lobster that was served with butternut squash puree, and B got the sirloin steak with pureed potato and spinach. I had champagne and B opted for a pinot noir. (As I write this, I realize it’s crap that they offered two pinot noirs out of three red options. Not okay.) I thought the lobster was good, and generally I like butternut squash (don’t tell my mom), but there was something very odd about a summer fish being served on top of a winter vegetable. B thought his food was reasonable. Not a glowing review, but passable. He originally wanted the duck, but it was prepared with chocolate and that just sounded a little too weird to take a chance on.
For dessert we shared the red velvet cake for two. By then, we were not really hungry. Not because there was too much food, but because it took them an hour and a half to get to the dessert.
I would definitely go back to that restaurant, but not on a special occasion. They just couldn’t handle the crowd. We were seated right outside of the kitchen door, and every single server in the place walked by our table at least a hundred times. And the space between tables was not big enough to make that anything but a major distraction. Our poor waiter had four tables in a row, and it felt like he was apologizing for the delays more than he was doing anything else.
But really, I’m not complaining. It was an amazing day, with a great guy. I would have been happy eating brunch at Dunkin’ Donuts and dinner at McDonald’s as long as I got to spend the day with B. I’m not trading in those roses for dandelions though. Not a chance!
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