Restaurant Week; Olivia eating fancy food?

Pardon my enthusiasm in advance.

HOLY SHIT, RESTAURANT WEEK IS THE BEST WEEK.

I went with some classmates to Maze by Gordon Ramsay for lunch; just got back, actually. Ryan organized it; he'd been talking about it in VFX with Eric (our teacher) and some other people, but I think I wasn't interested mostly because I don't really..know how to deal with fancy food? I mean I love watching Food Network, and the stuff they make on Iron Chef looks amazing (not that it was that big a deal; this lunch was probably comparatively way casual), but I..guess I don't really see myself as a fancy-food kind of person? I eat at diners and bakery-cafe-things. Thirty dollars, which is what we each paid for this lunch (including tip), is the most I've ever paid for one meal. I mean, this place is not much more expensive on normal days; maybe ten dollars over for the same meal. (I mean, look at his other restaurant at The London, the 'real' restaurant. It's $110 for the dinner and all the food looks kind of terrifying in an I-am-totally-not-a-gourmande sort of way.) But anyways, I hadn't been in on their plan until yesterday afternoon, when Ryan told me they had two open seats and asked if I wanted to go.

I was..really hesitant, actually. I've said already, I'm not one for fancy stuff. Fancy stuff tends to have ingredients I don't like, or at least things I'm wary of. I'm a picky eater. But I took a look at the Restaurant Week menu, figured it would be safe. And also I guess I wanted to have a new experience. So I filled the fifth spot at the second table - we went in two groups, with six people each, one at twelve and one at twelve thirty. Couldn't get larger reservations, I suppose. I like the people in my department. It's easy to talk to them because all we ever talk about is related to the industry or to classwork. So I was with Eric, Kyle, Justin, this guy Jesse who I kind of knew, and a freshman named John. Actually, I kind of had a mini-crisis before going because I didn't know what to wear. Stupid, I know, and doesn't sound like me. But I figured I probably shouldn't show up in my stupid sweatshirt and t-shirt or whatever. My family went to see The Nutcracker when I was home for winter break, and my parents had made me go out and get some slightly nicer clothes because SURPRISE you're not supposed to wear a sweatshirt to the ballet either. So I wore that. The jeans couldn't be helped, because I don't have any pants that aren't jeans. Same with my ratty sneakers. But it was fine. Like I said. It was the twenty-five-dollar-menu, not the over-a-hundred.

I also am pretty sure I haven't ever had a meal that lasted almost two hours. But that happened. Don't know about the guys, but I felt like with smaller portions it would be awkward to eat at normal pace, because I would have finished in several minutes. Whatever; this is how the French do it, right?

Alright, I guess I'm going to talk about the food now. I mainly want to talk about it here so I remember it, because man it was awesome.

We all ended up ordering basically the same stuff, probably because we were trying to stay on the safe side. All six of us got the same first course: "Hubbard squash soup; ragout of braised duck, black truffle". I googled this before I went (actually, before I even agreed to go), because I had no idea what ragout was and you can never be sure with food; for instance, sweetbread sounds cool until you realize Oops, it's weird squishy organs. (The other first courses were some kind of salad - the woman at the table next to us got it; it was arranged really nicely, kind of standing up and..I dunno, it was a salad - and marinated beetroot with ricotta and nuts and a wine dressing, which I didn't get because who's really expecting me to order beetroot, ever? The man at the next table had it, and the colors were gorgeous.) So this soup, I was kind of iffy about it before I saw it because I'm not a squash person, but oh my god. It came out in those shallow plate-bowl-things, just a little dollop of brown stringy-looking stuff which confused me, but Oh right, that was just the duck-and-truffle; they poured the soup in later. It was a very pretty orange; we all took pictures of our food, but the light wasn't great and I'm not much of a photographer so I'm going to see if one of them puts photos on Facebook that I can steal. And man, that stuff was delicious. The soup was a cream base, and I think the squash is more for texture than flavor, like the pumpkin soup Max and I made for Thanksgiving this year; it was also spicy. The duck-stuff..wow. I haven't had duck in a while, and I always have it Chinese-style when I do. I can't really describe it; it was really flavorful, just very..duck. I still have no idea what truffles taste like, but I'm assuming they helped.

Second course: "Roasted Amish chicken breast; braised red cabbage, bacon, thyme jus". (Jesse and Kyle got bouillabaisse, which is a seafood stew that I learned about in the fourth Harry Potter..) Man, this chicken was amazing. Extremely tender and juicy. I never eat chicken skin, but I did this time; it was awesome. The cabbage was a little sour, and really good. Kind of..soft and crunchy at the same time? There were also brussel sprouts, which I've never had before. That was probably the only part of the meal that I'm not really enthusiastic about; I mean, they were nice enough, but I guess I prefer..normal-sized cabbages to tiny ones? I've heard most people hate them, but I guess these were just too high-class to hate. The chicken breast came with a leg, and I tried my hardest to get the meat off with my knife and fork because it just didn't seem right to use my fingers for a thirty-dollar meal. No luck, so I just picked it off shiftily and hoped I wasn't too bad. It was worth it, though.

Dessert: "Vanilla custard with citrus fruits; steel cut oats and mandarin sorbet". So awesome. It looked like melted vanilla bean ice cream with pretty little slices of fruit, and..that's basically what it was? The custard was kind of pudding-y, kind of creamy. There were slices of orange and blood orange and these little cubes of..well, it was like Jello. Tangy; tasted like it was probably lemon and grapefruit. The sorbet was great. Very colorful dessert. Jesse, Kyle, and Eric got 'chocolate fondant', which came hot in a little cup with salted ice cream on the side. It smelled amazing, and looked kind of like a little souffle or something. I tried some of the ice cream when Kyle said he thought it was weird that it was salty, but it was pretty cool. (I think sweet and salty is in right now; at least, that's what I'm getting from the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck and some of Trader Joe's desserts.)

It was funny; the couple at the table next to us had come in later, so they were about a course behind us (and still finished at the same time, because I guess we were taking too long). But they had obviously been there before; I was kind of accidentally eavesdropping (oops), and they were talking to the host about the sous chef, and how they hadn't been there since blah blah something, and I think they had a problem with their food. At least, the woman did not look very happy with her chicken, and I was just sitting there eating mine like MY GOD HOW CAN SHE NOT LIKE THIS, IT'S THE BEST CHICKEN EVER. They were dressed nicely, and I'd guess they were around fifty or sixty - I'm not good with guessing ages. They didn't seem very happy, though. Probably because they were seated next to student rabble, and oh yeah, because there was something apparently wrong with the chicken.

But anyways. This was a good experience. It'll probably be a long time before I get to do something like this again, but it was definitely worth it. Maybe we'll go somewhere else for next year's Restaurant Week. I'm feeling a little guilty for dropping thirty bucks on lunch, so..don't know what I'm going to do for dinner. Probably water and crackers.

Olivia