splurge dinner (Spiaggia)

It's not for lack of time that I haven't posted about last week's dinner. I'll be honest: I've felt a little ambivalent about the whole meal.

I'll state this now: it was a fine meal in a gorgeous restaurant. Per person, it was also one of the most expensive meals I've ever had (I think only the ten courses with wine pairing at Michael Richard Citronelle beats it). And, sadly, the sticker shock has kind of held me back for the past week. A good meal, and yet I've been curiously embarrassed to have eaten it.

I'll forge onward, though. Conrad and I had a rare date night this month (he has A LOT of travel in March), and that is the important thing. Our friend Bob had given us a couple of gift cards for Spiaggia, and though we'd dined at the more casual Cafe Spiaggia, we'd not yet tried Spiaggia. What made it all the more special was that Bob, who knows so many people in the restaurants around the city, had contacted the host and let him know we were coming. The result? Essentially the best table in the restaurant with a fine view and extra food and wine brought our way.

Enough of this, let's keep this fun.

First off, we got to dress up. Conrad looks so very handsome in his newest suit, shirt, and tie. I think I clean up well enough, too. A cab ride down to the Magnificent Mile on a fine evening - no coats needed. We were shown to a table in the middle of the window looking out toward the lake,
and soon decided on a cocktail each. I think Spiaggia has convinced us that Manhattans are good. Their negroni was quite fine, too. Starting off with cocktails was perhaps an unwise choice given the wine that followed, but in the moment, it was the right thing to do.

An amuse to start with. Of course. Zucchini somehow, I was still a little dazzled at this point. It was fine. I rather liked the bread service.

Neither of us opted for the special tasting menu featuring black truffles. There were some good sounding items on it, truly, but there was plenty on the a la carte menu to entrance us. At the recommendation of our excellent server we enjoyed a bottle of Sfursat (slowly - this was not a wine to guzzle) and the following dishes (forgive the all-caps - I'm copying and pasting the names of the dishes from the restaurant Web site):

Conrad's PROSCIUTTO IBERICO DE BELLOTAS CON RICOTTA FATTO IN CASA (Hand cut acorn finished Iberico ham with housemade ricotta and Soave poached pears).

My UOVO FRITTO CON VERDURE AL FORNO, POLENTA CROCANTE E FONDUTA (Wood roasted winter vegetables and trumpet royale mushrooms with fried Yuppie Hill Farm egg, crispy Spin Rosso polenta and Bagoss de Malga fonduta). This was my favourite of my three courses.

We each had the same second course, a pasta dish not listed on their site but consisting of spaghetti with crab and coconut. I thought the sweetness of the crab and the coconut were amazingly harmonious, and I was really delighted with this dish.

Conrad's TAGLIATA DI MANZO CON CODA DI BUE E CAVOLO (Wood grilled prime strip loin with savoy cabbage wrapped oxtail, creamy buckwheat polenta, winter squash mostarda, fontina and Amarone). Conrad's favourite dish, though he thought the oxtail was guilding the lily some.

My TROTA AL FORNO CON LUMACHE E FUNGHI (Wood roasted Quinault River steelhead trout with abalone mushrooms, basil fed snails, creamy white polenta, fresh herbs and bottarga). This was fine, but oddly unmemorable compared to the previous two courses.

As is our habit, we ordered a dessert to share and a small cheese selection. The dessert came first. Along with more dessert. And wine to pair with it. Conrad and I kind of gave each other an "Uh oh, this could be dangerous" look and dug in. We'd ordered the ricotta mousse with blood orange sorbet (another item that is not on the Web site, sorry, though a similar dessert is up there). The use of blood orange was quite tasty, the mousse made for a blank pallet behind it. We also received a selection of sorbetti and gelatti: mango, lemon-lime, raspberry, chocolate, salted caramel. All were excellent, the citrus one intensely so. Oh, and a dessert amuse, if you will: a date filled with (I think) mascarpone.

And we still had cheese to go. Happily, we'd only ordered three. I can't recall the names of all of them, but there was the La Tur and I believe the Erborinato di Pecora among them. If I have that latter one right, it was our favourite, tasting something like a blue, that tanginess that we appreciated.

We still had a few sips of wine left, though it wasn't as good after the cheese (alas). I gave mine to Conrad in the end and switched to some decaf. Some time about 2.5 or so hours after we arrived, we wandered out to Michigan Avenue and caught a cab home. Full from the dinner, happy with our date.

And yet the price. The price. Ah well. It's done and paid for and that's that. A splurge. A big splurge. One I hope to repeat because it all was so good. One I'm not sure I want to repeat again.

sated

You know, there are evenings where I think, "No, I'm really not making it to the gym tomorrow morning." Tonight is one of those.

Forgive me. I'm 41, I can't rage hard all night like I could when I was 26 (and even then I couldn't do it all that successfully). I've had a very very very enjoyable evening of conversation, food, wine, and cocktails with the infamous and laudable John Chrastka and his wife, Deanna. I won't even tell you how long it is taking me to type this in the post-dinner state I'm in.

Look, here's the deal: Conrad is my husband, and I love him fully and unconditionally. But there are a few rare men I meet who are just, well, awesome in the truest sense of the word. John is one. The ALA gays adore him (count me among them), he gets thing done, and best of all, he came to Yoshi's! Our usual Sunday hang-out plus a terrific and handsome foodie library guy? With his lovely and genuinely charming wife? Oh yes, the night was a success.

I have no food photos, sorry. I do have photos of John and Deanna, at least. Conrad was super for soldiering on through dinner (quite enjoyably, he told me when I got home- the week he just endured had him drained, but he hopes for the company again) after an exhausting weekend up north and a 6-hour drive home. We ate well, drank even better, and as snow falls gently on a late winter night, I'm glad for a good dinner with friends at one of our regular places.

Now then. we'll have to stock up on some fine scotch and wine for dinner together at home some time this spring...

dinner for 1

Conrad comes home today - hooray!!

But in the meantime, I have to eat, right? At the end of a week in which I had a cold and resorted all too often to re-heating some chicken tortilla soup I'd made and frozen in batches some time back (served up this week without tortillas), I wanted something a bit better to dine on Saturday evening. And good as the cookies I made were, I can't subsist on cookie dough either.

(but goodness knows I try)

Between the soup and a store-bought roasted chicken that were the mainstays of my week of dining, I was heartily tired of poultry. Fish instead, and how nice to see Arctic char on sale at Whole Foods after brunch with the team yesterday. I knew I had kale in the fridge at home, so that covered one side. A parsnip and a big shallot later, and I had bought the main ingredients for dinner.

I spent the late afternoon baking the peanut crisps, then it was on to the main meal. I caramelized the parsnips and shallots somewhat, then braised that in chicken broth to tenderness. The kale I simply steamed. The fish went into some browned butter to crisp up the skin before I flipped it over briefly. Three components, and that was my meal.



Well that and some cava. I wanted a bit of wine last night, and I knew that the remnants would go untouched until midweek at best. We had a couple of bottles of cava that we'd bought for a party in the past, so I chilled one of them. No, I didn't drink it all. It was about $7 for a bottle, so though it was wasteful to pour so much down the sink, I also didn't think too much about the ultimate cost.

And so I sat, sipped, ate. And yes, I had a couple of cookies for dessert before retiring to continue on my book.