chicus.com

Birthday Dinner
Sep 04, 2009
Jen took me out for a fancy dinner in advance of my 32nd. Neither of us would be in Boston that evening so we went to Upstairs On The Square on Wednesday.

I have a love-hate relationship with fancier restaurants. To me, fancier is when the average price of an entree (not including sandwiches) creeps close to $20. I just have a block in paying $20 for an entree (which is not to say anything under $20 requires little or no deliberation).

Anyhow, Upstairs on the Square fits into my qualification of a fancy restaurant. We sat down without reservations around 6:30 and were served our (tap) water. But shortly thereafter our waiter disappeared. It is worth mentioning that around the same time Skip Gates and three friends sat down at a table not far from us.

For those unaware, Skip Gates is a professor at Harvard and was recently at the center of what he believed to be a racial profiling case. He was coming back to his home, didn;t have the key, and cops were called. It was big news around here and became national news when Obama weighed in and eventually invited the cop and Mr. Gates to the White House for a discussion over beer.

Jen was simply entranced with their party. I was intrigued but also felt ambivalent. He was infamous, I would say, not necessarily a celebrity prior to the event. So I was interested in the conversation but not enough that I wanted to sit silently and truly eavesdrop.

To say the Gates party ruled the night is an understatement, nary a minute went by where Jen didn't glance in that direction and I admit, I did get up at one point to use the restroom primarily to catch a glimpse, as they were behind me.

Beyond that I was in a lovefest with my love-hate relationship with fancy restaurants. Not only was it not my bill to pay but also we had a gift certificate. I know, I am a nerd. But it made me feel good that we had $50 knocked off our bill before we began. Jen got some Jackie O martini (which a member of Gates' party also had) and I had a beer with our heirloom tomato and melon salad appetizer. (Note: Their menu is at this point not current as the menu changed on Tuesday.)

My entree was the skirt steak. I was looking forward to the strip steak on their online menu and was genuinely disappointed that the option was skirt steak. However, it had this amazing buttery flavor that really set it off. I always thought of skirt steak as a bit of a leftover. Great on the grill for fajitas but never the show stopper of a real loin. This meal proved me wrong. Jen had the scallops, which were garnished with some sort of funky lentil I had never heard of. It was very good as well but I was preferential to my beef.

We opted for dessert, Jen for some sweet-ish pastry I can't recall but found to be quite good. I went for the sorbet sampling and gave her one of the three selections. She chose the malted chocolate, which was incredibly rich. I had a bite but was more than content to let her enjoy the bulk of it. I thoroughly enjoyed my choices, however. One was blackberry and thyme...I was really intrigued by incorporating a spice with the fruit. The other was pluot and honey. I had never heard of a pluot until Jen introduced me to them at the grocery store this summer, though I guess she didn't actually realize she knew what a pluot was. She pointed to it in the store as a mix of a PLUm and apricOT (PLUOT). But when I ordered it she swore she had never heard of it which led to an interesting conversation where I explained that it came from the beginning of plum and end of apricot and she realized she had, in fact, told me of it. By the way, both sorbets were amazing!

Anyhow, the point of this all is that I loved that they were using fresh and local ingredients based on the season in ways I would not imagine. I've been hitting the farmers market with more regularity and focusing on eating as close to the source as possible. However, I tend towards hearty but unoriginal salads for dinner and ripping apart fresh fruit with my teeth for breakfast. It's not often you can keep that up at a restaurant but I suppose if you are willing to pay a bit more you can do so. It inspired me to tell Jen that we should visit such 'fancy' restaurants every four to six weeks. We otherwise just cook together and aren't overly extravagant so it seems to be a workable arrangement.

Speaking of cooking at home, Jen's gift to me is a visit to make our own cheese. There is a woman in western Mass who has workshops and we are going to one in November. Yes, again, I am a big nerd, I thought it was the coolest thing.