New Restaurant Week!

So today started off like any other day - yogurt, though I forgot my banana this morning (gotta remember, I'll have a banananana in just a bit) and a donut peach. My day ended up being packed with issues and fires to put out on a project, so I didn't get to enjoy a lunch at noon - true, it was a bad thing. Lunchtime for me didn't come until almost 3:30, but I did have a lychee fruit while sitting at my desk in the afternoon. I picked up a chicken tikka sandwich, with mint chutney - not all too interesting, but it definitely filled the void.

This evening, as part of Restaurant Week, many area restaurants offer set 3-course meals at *sometimes* lower prices. I dragged Hubby to a new local vegetarian restaurant, and while he didn't raise an eyebrow when I first suggested the restaurant, I know he was making a carnivore's sacrifice for love. Cheesy, yes - I can already hear those groans of pain out there - but hey, he does so much for us! So there we went - the carnivore and quasi-vegetarian, off to the restaurant. At first, when we got there, there weren't many people, but boy, it filled up quickly. We started off with some of their specialty non-alcoholic drinks - I had their home-made ginger ale, and Hubby had their limeade. WOW - what an infusion of flavor! The ginger ale was really gingery, and his limeade was, well, quite a good squeeze of lime! He started off with some herbed risotto croquettes - out of this world! And not that greasy! I had the habanero melon soup - interesting indeed. Sweet and spicy, quite a match for the spicy ginger ale I also had.

Hubby finished his limeade, and switched to the strawberry lemonade - so good! I definitely have to get a batch of frozen strawberries to make some smoothies soon. Then came our main courses - Hubby ordered a goat cheese tart (basically a goat cheese mixture between puff pastry shells), and I had some sesame-crusted tofu with quinoa. The tofu was wonderful, but I didn't realize until the very last block that the blocks had a different textures! The wonderful variation - it kept the dish new and fresh with each bite, but through subtle texture, not flavor. Even Hubby conceded, my dish was pretty good.

Dessert - he had a warm chocolate cake with vanilla gelato; I had their home-made ice cream sandwich, vanilla ice cream between molasses cookies. Oh so yummy - it really was a good meal all together. The flavors, from beginning to end, kept our taste buds interested - and all vegetarian! At the end, we were talking about the concept of the restaurant - and the fact that, as in design, when one is faced with a more limited set of constraints, one finds more possibilities. This place was definitely one where they found a multitude of possibilities with a limited palette - and we happily partook in those constraints.