Vy and I both enjoy food.
Which is a ridiculous thing to say. What healthy animal doesn't like food?
I mean to say: Vy and I seek out good food.
Again, ridiculous, but getting closer. For food to be good in our nomenclature, it must manifest some qualities.
- deliciousness
- free of known allergens
- compatible with our Won't Eat Mammals stance
- compatible with our low-carbohydrate, high-protein desires
- compatible with our locally grown, little preservative stance
Which sounds pompous and elaborate and cumbersome in words, but which tends to work pretty smoothly in practice. We can generally glance at a menu and have a pretty good idea if we'll be able to find something we like. Since we have markedly different appetites and flavor requirements, it helps for us to go to a restaurant with a variety of dishes and even styles.
Last night we went to what is probably our favorite restaurant, Nibblers.
Not only is it good food, it's a nice brisk walk away so I can feel virtuous and wholesome as I anticipate gorging myself on cheese. It's an accidental find from when we first moved into the neighborhood and were looking for a video store and decided to treat ourselves to a meal out. It's in a plaza with a barbecue place [great for me, not so much for Vy], an Italian place [not so great for either of us], and a Thai place [usually ideal for us but it was closed at the time]. So we stopped in to what we thought was a cafe, judging by the outside seating area.
We were wrong.
It is a delicious Epicurean indulgence.
Last night, we went back for our third visit and we took with us our friends Annaliese and David because we wanted a chance to share this restaurant with people we really like and who we thought would enjoy it as much as we do.
A thing which Nibblers does which we enjoy is have a theme to the food for any given month. This month was Japanese cuisine, which is one of our favorites and when I say our I think I can safely draw David and Annaliese into my bloc.
David & I started with coffees, the almond mocha kiss. Then we all had wine flights, three different themed wines. Vy had the Aromatics, Annaliese the Elegance, I forget which one David had, and I had the Spanish Sips. Mine was the only flight to include any reds but there about 37 other flight choices and many of them were red-specific or red-heavy.
We had the on-table snack of shrimp chips, or at least Annaliese and I did.
We had a pair of salads which were butter lettuce with balls of cheese rolled in nuts on them and a fruity vinaigrette dressing.
Then we had creamed spinach which was really spinach, in a cream sauce, with caramelized onions, so it was not only attractive and edible, but deliciously so, and stir fried mixed vegetables which had carrots and purple carrots and they reminded us of perfectly grilled veggies.
Then the entrees of the meal:
- rolled chicken stuffed with garlic and fruit, with a tomato sauce
- corn and masa pancake with avocado slices
- squash blossom and fiddlehead quesadilla
- shaft blue and amaretto fondue with apple, carrots and slices of focaccia
Dessert was a chocolate gelatto [locally made by an Italian who got off the boat 12 yeas ago and is very particular about the Right Way to make it], and a ginger cake, and a plate of four artesian cheeses, chosen by the chef.
He chose:
- a Cahill porter cheddar, made in Ireland, with a process where after the curds have begun to form, the throw them all in a vat of beer and let them sit for a time and then take them back out and put them in the mold to squish and shape the cheese
- a cheese from Galicia named San Simon which is crafted with a tear drop shop and is said to be as 'sweet as a kiss' and [according to the chef] is the inspiration for Hershey Kisses being the shape they are and bearing the name they possess
- the Andante Acapella, a goat cheese produced by a local dairy, ran as a one-woman show by a retired biochemistry professor, which has the name it does as it's 'unaccompanied' by any other flavors, it's simply a delicious goat cheese flavor
- a bleu cheese of some kind but of which all details have fled my mind.
Paired with each cheese was an appropriate tidbit: pressed walnut paste, oatcake, apple slices, and so on.
Price per person, after tip? $40. That is a steal of a price for a meal this delicious.
Then we walked back home and because our taste in video games is as refined as our taste in food, we played some four player Gauntlet: Dark Legacy to burn off all of those calories with frantic running away from acid barrels and explosive barrels.
posted at 08:01 PDT (-0700) (comments disabled) permanent link Technorati tagged as: bay area, cheese, food, review, wine
