Odds and Ends

A little later I'm going to blog about beer, but first I want to mention a few other things that don't merit posts of their own. Call it a Blog Tartare Casserole if you like.

Osaka - Neil and I went there Friday night with a group of friends. I like Osaka well enough but it's not my favorite sushi place (that honor goes to Sakura Blue). It is, however, my friend Tabetha's favorite, so we eat there when she's doing the organizing. Osaka was slammed Friday night and it took a loooong time to get our food, but they gave us complimentary edamame and dessert (red bean ice cream, I believe), so we didn't mind a bit. And someone in our group subsequently decided to have her birthday party there next month. Good job, Osaka!

Sweet Surrender - We're Sweet Surrender fans in part because we're friends with the owner, but we'd love it even if we weren't. The friendly folks there didn't bat an eye when our party of 9 wandered in after dining at Osaka. We enjoyed uniformly delicious desserts and one of the employees made sure that we were all signed up to receive coupons for free cake on our birthdays. Several of the people who were with us hadn't been there before and were quite impressed with the food.

Wild Eggs - This is the hot new breakfast place in town, and I ate there yesterday for the second time. I had the Farmers Market Skillet, a dish full of various veggies topped with cheese and two fried eggs. It didn't blow my mind, but it was a perfectly good breakfast. It came with an Everything Muffin; these muffins are inspired by "everything" bagels and are really, really good. I really like Wild Eggs and thought that our 20-minute wait for a table was reasonable. If the wait were much longer (and I suspect that it was by the time we left), I'm not sure I'd find it worth it. (To be fair, I am extraordinarily impatient when it comes to restaurant waits.)

City Cafe - Ah, the Russian roulette that is the City Cafe specials. Sometimes they're great, and sometimes they're... not. Neil and I went last night and both had extremely mediocre meals. I had salmon with a dill cream sauce and Neil had teriyaki flank steak. My meal was mostly devoid of flavor aside from the unappealing fishiness of the salmon, and Neil describes his meat as "blah and frighteningly pink in some places." Blech. I remain loyal to City Cafe though because the stuff on their regular menu is so good and their specials are too, more often than not. Just not last night.

Books - I've been on a big food book kick lately and yesterday I picked up The United States of Arugula (which I'm reading now and quite enjoying), Heat, and In Defense of Food. I'm excited about all of them and will report back as I read them.

Bagels - Earlier today I said to Neil, "Remember those really good bagels we had in Montreal?" Just now I realized that there is such a thing as a Montreal-style bagel. Who knew?