Birthday Food

Generally speaking, Cathy and I avoid really fancy restaurants. The ambiance and attitude of some of those joints make us expect the food to shoot magical rainbows and mini-unicorns directly into our brains and, unfortunately, it never happens.

Despite this, we've developed the habit of checking out some of these places on her birthday, and this year we went to Charlie Trotter's. The food was good, although there were certainly no lasers or mythical creatures flying off the plate. However, the most interesting aspect of it all was that we sat at the kitchen table, a single table that Trotter's has inside the actual kitchen. This time around, I geeked out and took some photos - however, the lighting was mixed and I was using a slow lens...do not prepared to be wowed.


View from the table. It's great because we get to watch our food get prepared, see some techniques, and interact a bit with the chefs. Being able to learn a bit more about food and cooking while eating is a nice bonus. Plus the dining room decor was reminiscent of a vomiting antique rug (at least from what I saw).

Anyway, there was a lot of food. There's no menu, they just "spontaneously" make you food - which basically turns out to be their tasting menu plus a couple made specifically for our table. It came out to a lengthy 15 courses. Some of them:


Maine diver sea scallop with fingerling potato, foamed parsley, and veal heart...


Deliciousness with Oaxacan mole sauce...


and Meyer lemon sorbet with black sesame. Sidebar: my brother used to have a Meyer lemon tree in his backyard.


A somewhat ridiculous but amusing part of the experience was that we each assisted a chef in plating a dish, as Cathy is so expertly doing here. She was asked to plate one of our desserts:


Claudio Corallo chocolate truffles with red wine cherries and thyme.

Good food, good fun.