Tonight we had a date night. Sandi arranged for her parents to relax at our house while The Girls slept so that we could go out to have a private dinner. We weighed a bunch of options (P.F. Chang’s, Havana Café) but decided to go back to Le Sans-Souci since we couldn’t really bring The Girls there for a meal.
Sandi had the same thing she had last time and I fretted over what to have. I’m a bit of an explorer, so I wanted to try something I’ve never had. I eyed the frog legs, but decided against them because a) I didn’t have any idea what they’d taste like and b) I had absolutely no idea how to eat them. On the latter reason, it would be like ordering lobster without having any idea how to get to the meat—I didn’t feel comfortable asking such a simple question. So I’ll have to wait until I can do some research on the Web before I have that one. I also toyed with a delicious-sounding veal dish, but decided against that because I had never had veal and didn’t want to waste a precious meal on an uncertainty.
So I ordered the Tournedos Rossini, which consisted of filet mignon topped with pâté de foie gras smothered in a bearnaise sauce. The menu didn’t list the piece of bread that the concoction sat on, so I had to remove it. I chose it because I knew that I liked filet mignon and I had never tasted foie gras before; thus I had a nice fallback food in case the foie gras was disgusting.
I liked it. I don’t know that I could eat a large portion of it, but it was delicious in the small quantity I had. I didn’t think I’d like duck liver, but I suppose that’s largely a psychological issue rather than one of the palette.
The only downside in the meal was the Caesar salad we ordered to split. It was prepared fresh at the table and it was an authentic Caesar salad. Apparently, my palette had become quite used to the gastronomic corruption that commonly is called a Caesar salad because this one tasted nothing like any Caesar salad I had ever had. I also got quite an education in what actually goes into the dressing as it was prepared from fresh ingredients right in front of me. I guess I’m going to have to stick with the faux Caesar salads I’m accustomed to since it was just too shocking to eat again.
The meal came to $96.00 even after tip and it was well worth it. We don’t have such delicacies everyday: it’s nice to splurge every once in awhile.