January 9 - O. M. G.

I don't know what else to say. I think we will remember this day no matter what else happens. And it's sad, because I feel I must have turned into a food snob at some point in my life, when really, I've been pretty sheltered in the food world. I have ventured into a lot more variety the past several years, and have worked a lot on my own cooking, trying out recipes, fine tuning things, etc. But STILL. I grew up on hot dogs and spaghetti with Prego sauce. How bad must something be for me to think it's bad?

Kevin (aka Dh - dear husband, damn husband, dick head, take your pick) and I had made plans to go out for dinner. A new restaurant has been in construction for quite a while, and finally they are OPEN, close by, with a name that conjures up the finest in Italian cuisine. Now there is also a restaurant that I LOVE, Bacco Wine Cafe, they have the best food, so fresh, so well cooked, it's a small place and I use it as my measuring stick. They aren't a pasta place, although you can get pasta if you wish. Perhaps that is too high a standard for new places to be compared with, but c'est la vie.

We don't get out sans kids very often so we were understandably excited. We parked the car and the new place was nearby a photographer friend of mine, who had some dishes since I'd given him some leftovers a while back, so we stopped to pick them up. My photo for today is a cheat, since I didn't take it, but it WAS at least from my camera. Kevin #2 took this photo of us as we were headed out to eat.

We opted for quick seating, which was outside. Ordered a bottle of wine. The wine arrived, dh tasted it, said it was fine, and then after the waitress left started laughing b/c she'd brought us the Cabernet, not the Merlot. No biggie, it tasted fine. Then we ordered. She brought out some bread and asked if we'd like some oil. Yes, that would be lovely! So a small saucer of what I assume was olive oil was set on our table. I took some bread, dipped it, and thought my taste buds must have died or something. There was no flavor whatsoever. It was like eating oily, bland dough. Dh had a funky look on his face so I knew it wasn't just me. I tried swirling the oil with the grated (canned!) parmesan that had been poured into it, with the bread and just on my finger, still I could only assume they must have run out of olive oil and poured plain canola or something. It was pretty empty tasting, just plain oil. NASTAY.

We gave up on the bread and waited on our dinners. In the interim we started playing with the table, which was very wobbly. VERY wobbly. We entertained the idea of hitting it just so when our waitress arrived, thus spilling the bottle of wine, or glass, or water, anything. Eventually they saw the wobbling and brought over a wad of napkins to wedge under one of the legs. It helped a little.

Finally, FINALLY, food. Only, WTF is this? This isn't what I ordered. I had ordered a Spinach and grilled shrimp salad. I got grilled shrimp and something, no spinach. I even made sure to show the waitress my selection on the menu when I was ordering. So she took it back, apologizing profusely. Dh's entree arrived at the same time, and once I got mine cleared up I looked at his. I have never seen a dish quite like it, so I was pretty sure it wasn't what he'd asked for. He wanted chicken scallopine (sp?) and she brought him chickend scarpiolla (sp?). Very different dishes. Eventually she came back around, we explained the second mixup and she again apologized, took the plate and disappeared.

By then I had my salad, which wasn't bad, and I was at least eating. But we were laughing and trying to hide it, even though we were feeling a bit juvenile wanting to spill the entire table over onto someone. His chicken arrived and she asked if he wanted the spaghetti with it. Umm, the spaghetti that's SUPPOSED to come with it? At first he said No, not wanting to deal with it anymore but then changed his mind when she returned and said if it was no bother, he'd like to have the pasta since there was plenty of sauce in the scallopine.

The pasta arrived very quickly, but it was covered in marinara sauce. The scallopine is a butter/lemon based sauce, there was no mixing that pasta with the scallopine. We both tasted it, decided we'd prefer Prego and that was the end of the spaghetti. I make our marinara/spaghetti sauce from canned tomatoes, not much to it, so for THAT stuff to be bad, what could they have done to it? Geez. At that point dh said he felt like crying, and he's never been a picky food eater in restaurants.

All around us people were raving about the veal saltimbucca. I guess we should have ordered that.

Arrivederci , Mezza Luna!