Five year anniversary.
Jun. 14th, 2004 01:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasLis and I spent a good chunk of the day just lazing about the house. But not all of it.
My Uncle David, knowing that we were real close to broke, gave me some money with the requirement that it HAD to be spent on a nice meal for our anniversary. Lis looked around for good prixe-fixe menus, and we found one that looked good.
The Craigee St. Bistrot has a "Chef's Tasting Menu", after 9 PM, for $30. Basically, after 9, they can tell which things they are NOT going to run out of, but which should still be sold, so, for thirty bucks, you get three courses and dessert. You don't choose what those three courses will be.
The only seating they had was at 10, which meant that we had enough time to see the Boston Gay Men's Chorus do the songs of Elton John and Queen. Lis got nosebleed seats for $12, and it was a great show. The first half was Elton John songs, including a fun choreographed dance sequence for "Crocodile Rock", and a sort of saluute to Elton John's costumer in "My Strongest Suit". The second half was Queen, and they had a guest vocalist for singing most of Freddie's parts. There are very few men who can cover Freddie's range -- there are not that many women who can, but the odds are better. So they had a female vocalist.
One thing I can say about her -- if Terry Moore ever wants to do a live-action "Strangers in Paradise", I think we've found Katchoo. Also, she sang well.
It was a great show.
And then we went off to dinner.
Lis and I started off by splitting a Kir Royale (champaigne and creme de cassis). And we got a bottle of sparkling water. After that, it was all up to the chef. Whatever he wanted to serve us was fine.
We started off with a pork taureene, which is, basically, a meatloaf. A really, really, amazingly GOOD meatloaf. It was served with a bunch of traditional accompaniments, such as dijon mustard, pickeled shallots, and other yummy stuff.
The second course was bluefish, in a chiorzo sauce, with mussels and razorback clams, with fresh peas, and all sorts of good stuff. I can't even begin to describe this, except to say that the bluefish had NO fishy taste whatsoever -- and bluefish is generally a strongly-flavored, very fishy fish. It's got a whole lot of oil, and most people who like bluefish like it because it's fishy.
Me, I more-or-less pretty much like it even though it's got a strong fishy flavor. So, being served a piece of bluefish with NO fishy flavor -- wow. And then we had to soak up all the extra sauce with bread, because it was SO good.
Third course was nifty. . . looking at the menu, we think that the kitchen had started to finish off all their ingredients, so we thhnk that he made up a third course off of little leftover bits from other meals. It was a polenta in a chicken broth with wild mushrooms and a poached egg on top. I joked to Lis that it was the best eggs-and-grits I'd ever had. But this was really one of those things that it was a huge challenge, because I wanted to eat it as slowly as possible so that I could still be eating it for a long time, but that meant eating slowly, which was so hard, because it was so delicious.
For dessert, Lis was given a fruit compote/crisp with cinnamon ice cream (with a heirloom cinnamon which had a much more intense cinnamon flavor than most cinnamon), and I was given profiteroles with vanilla-mint ice cream, and drizzled with chili-spiced chocolate sauce. We tasted each other's, then we started eating. My intention had been to eat about half, then trade. But when I finished my first half, I didn't want to give mine up. And Lis was having similar thoughts about her dessert. So we had another bite of each other's dessert, decided that, even though the other dessert WAS really good, we still wanted to hold on to our current one, and didn't trade.
We were there for two hours. Total bill -- two four-course Chef's Tasting menus, one kir royale, bottle of Perrier, tax, and the kind of perhaps overgenerous tip that someone else in the service industry tends to give -- was $90. We paid ten bucks in parking, and 24 for the tickets, so the entire day was about fifty cents per week that we've been married.
It was worth it.
My Uncle David, knowing that we were real close to broke, gave me some money with the requirement that it HAD to be spent on a nice meal for our anniversary. Lis looked around for good prixe-fixe menus, and we found one that looked good.
The Craigee St. Bistrot has a "Chef's Tasting Menu", after 9 PM, for $30. Basically, after 9, they can tell which things they are NOT going to run out of, but which should still be sold, so, for thirty bucks, you get three courses and dessert. You don't choose what those three courses will be.
The only seating they had was at 10, which meant that we had enough time to see the Boston Gay Men's Chorus do the songs of Elton John and Queen. Lis got nosebleed seats for $12, and it was a great show. The first half was Elton John songs, including a fun choreographed dance sequence for "Crocodile Rock", and a sort of saluute to Elton John's costumer in "My Strongest Suit". The second half was Queen, and they had a guest vocalist for singing most of Freddie's parts. There are very few men who can cover Freddie's range -- there are not that many women who can, but the odds are better. So they had a female vocalist.
One thing I can say about her -- if Terry Moore ever wants to do a live-action "Strangers in Paradise", I think we've found Katchoo. Also, she sang well.
It was a great show.
And then we went off to dinner.
Lis and I started off by splitting a Kir Royale (champaigne and creme de cassis). And we got a bottle of sparkling water. After that, it was all up to the chef. Whatever he wanted to serve us was fine.
We started off with a pork taureene, which is, basically, a meatloaf. A really, really, amazingly GOOD meatloaf. It was served with a bunch of traditional accompaniments, such as dijon mustard, pickeled shallots, and other yummy stuff.
The second course was bluefish, in a chiorzo sauce, with mussels and razorback clams, with fresh peas, and all sorts of good stuff. I can't even begin to describe this, except to say that the bluefish had NO fishy taste whatsoever -- and bluefish is generally a strongly-flavored, very fishy fish. It's got a whole lot of oil, and most people who like bluefish like it because it's fishy.
Me, I more-or-less pretty much like it even though it's got a strong fishy flavor. So, being served a piece of bluefish with NO fishy flavor -- wow. And then we had to soak up all the extra sauce with bread, because it was SO good.
Third course was nifty. . . looking at the menu, we think that the kitchen had started to finish off all their ingredients, so we thhnk that he made up a third course off of little leftover bits from other meals. It was a polenta in a chicken broth with wild mushrooms and a poached egg on top. I joked to Lis that it was the best eggs-and-grits I'd ever had. But this was really one of those things that it was a huge challenge, because I wanted to eat it as slowly as possible so that I could still be eating it for a long time, but that meant eating slowly, which was so hard, because it was so delicious.
For dessert, Lis was given a fruit compote/crisp with cinnamon ice cream (with a heirloom cinnamon which had a much more intense cinnamon flavor than most cinnamon), and I was given profiteroles with vanilla-mint ice cream, and drizzled with chili-spiced chocolate sauce. We tasted each other's, then we started eating. My intention had been to eat about half, then trade. But when I finished my first half, I didn't want to give mine up. And Lis was having similar thoughts about her dessert. So we had another bite of each other's dessert, decided that, even though the other dessert WAS really good, we still wanted to hold on to our current one, and didn't trade.
We were there for two hours. Total bill -- two four-course Chef's Tasting menus, one kir royale, bottle of Perrier, tax, and the kind of perhaps overgenerous tip that someone else in the service industry tends to give -- was $90. We paid ten bucks in parking, and 24 for the tickets, so the entire day was about fifty cents per week that we've been married.
It was worth it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-13 11:22 pm (UTC)Just because I'm a nerd like that.... =)
~mike~
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-13 11:28 pm (UTC)Elton John! Queen! Whee!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-13 11:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-14 12:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-14 02:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-14 04:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-14 05:39 am (UTC)happy, happy anniversary!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-14 06:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-14 08:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-14 08:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-14 09:23 am (UTC)What they said