THIS is a journey… into soup.
October 9th, 2006I had another food adventure, this time at the Lil’ River Grill in downtown Lawrenceville. It’s what I would call a semi-gourmet restaurant (certainly more culinarily advanced than, say, Macaroni Grill, but still not quite a full-fledged duck-breast-vichysoisse-soufflé kind of gourmet restaurant). Once again, I must record my food firsts:
- shrimp, potato, & red pepper chowder
- pecorino & blue crab
- (real) mozarella with heirloom tomatoes, sea salt, sweet basil, oilve oil, and some sort of potent vinaigrette
- mascarpone cheesecake with blackberry glaze
Emily raved that the mascarpone cheescake was the best cheescake she’s ever had. It was served in a bowl with the crust in the bottom of the bowl, then the cheese filling, then two thin buttery-crispy-flaky-cookie-thingies (I have an extensive gourmet vocabulary) stuck edgewise on top with blackberries and blackberry glaze filling the space between the two cookies. Yum. Getting hungry again.
Actually, one of the nicest things about the restaurant was the interior decoration, which used the natural brick of the old building it was located in to good effect. The pictures on their site are a surprisingly lame depiction of how nice it is inside.
One of the best things about this food adventure was the price. I got some “Dining Perks” dollars through Turner which I could use at the restaurant. They work like this: you buy the dollars like a gift certificate (good at a bunch of different restaurants), but you’re buying them at a discount. In Turner’s case, it’s a 50% discount. So, at a semi-gourmet restaurant, we got off with appetizers, entrées, and desserts for two people for $30. There’s nothing so nice as going to a nice restaurant where I like the food and Emily likes the price.
October 9th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
Boy, that sounds like a delicious place! There’s nothing like “new South” cuisine or whatever they call it now.
Looking forward to seeing you guys soon. Somehow I have this feeling that there’ll be a little “new South cuisine” at the wedding.
October 20th, 2006 at 8:45 am
The New South Cuisine in this case seems to be primarily French & Itaian cooking with a couple of American favorites thrown in (BBQ Pork or Steak with who-knows-what).
I guess if it were trully a southern “New South” it would gourmet fried chickin, chitlins, grits, biscuits and gravy, and fried okra. But I guess chefs shy away from a whole genre of cooking whose sole flavoring agent is fried fat.