Incanto, 8/2/2007

We had high expectations at Incanto. We had read and heard fabulous things. Just looking at the menu, I felt so excited that this restaurant would be Tier One. Alas, it was not, and it is in Tier Two.

Things began well with a great selection of bread and an amazing tapenade. We started with a melon and tomato salad seasoned with a delicious vanilla salt. The melon was excellent, but the tomatoes were not quite ready yet. Heather and I also shared the salumi platter, which had a divine mortadella and salami, but there was something made of trotter and the coppa di testa which were too fatty-gluey for our taste. The pate was also quite good, but I was getting full and needed to save room for the pastas.

We had heard about the amazing pastas but we were disappointed. We got the handkerchief pasta with pork ragu, and this was delicious. The pasta was delicate and the sauce went with it really well. The pappardelle with rabbit sugo and carrots was quite good if you got the right mouthful, but some of the chunks of rabbit were slightly dry. The spaghettini with tuna heart and egg was overly salty and despite the exotic organ, not that exciting.

We were so full at that point, that none of us were really able to appreciate our entrees. Which was too bad in Heather and my case because we ordered the braised pork shoulder with eggplant and tomato and it was divine. Melt in your mouth shreds of pork, but we only had room for two bites. Ethan's entree of albacore with avocado was passable except that instead of slices or chunks of avocado, the dish came really with an avocado sauce. If it's a sauce, the menu should say it's a sauce!

We wished we had room for dessert, to try the legendary panna cotta, but we will go back for that. Unfortunately, we're not sure we would go back for an entire dinner. The pork shoulder and mortadella were not enough to keep this restaurant in Tier One. The disappointment of the pastas and the misleading avocado label put it in Tier Two.

A Benedictine Call

It isn't official, but I am announcing it anyway. I am counting on the public nature of this proclamation to inspire my teammates to loosen their belts in preparation for my proposed double header. One dish. Two rival locations. Time for a Sunday morning eggs benedict taste off: Maverick vs. Canteen. You heard me. We're going to eat brunch TWICE in one mid-morning. This taste off will be for the quality of the dish on that day only. I don't want to hear any whining about how good Canteen used to be. When the quality goes down, the title is lost. It just may be time to crown a new winner...are you ready?

Thank you!

Mucho thank yous to datenight, datenight extended and all my friends and family who made my birthday delicious and delightful. Great way to start the year. Thanks kids.

Happy Birthday Sarah!

Yesterday was Date Night member Sarah's birthday. Day of Sarah began with a brunch of delicious baked eggs and turkey sausage. I made vanilla cupcakes with lemon curd filling which went over well. Team Date Night redeemed itself with two victorious rounds of Taboo. Granted these victories were only by one point or so, but we take what we can get. For dinner, we had Delfina pizzas and Bi-Rite butter pecan and chocolate ice creams as well as DNer Heather's amazing superhero cheesecake. All in all a great night, and happy birthday to Sarah!

Cause of death: Whole Hog

You couldn't do Whole Hog everyday. You couldn't even do it every month. You would die and I don't mean like a teenage girl, "OMG, I fell in the cafeteria and I was so embarrassed, I died right there." I mean death. Your heart would stop; you would stop breathing and thinking; your Mom would cry. I don't think you would die at Olivetto but you would die and you would die early and the cause of death would be Oliveto's Whole Hog dinner.

Every year; every year is right.

It's not dangerous then; it is delicous. And it all comes down to the lard. It is the perfect representation of the experience. As you choose your meal, as you greet your companions and look around, there is bread to nosh on. And there is lard. Not butter. Lard. And the thing is, they could have just had butter, standard butter. But no, they had lard. And that's the difference.

Whole Hog at Oliveto (aka Team Date Night gets schooled by Team Pain(e) and Fears)

After reading about last year's Whole Hog dinner, I was bound and determined that I would not miss it. I joined the Oliveto e-mail list and waited. As soon as the notification about this year's menu was sent out, I pounced on a reservation. Two members of Date Night would be dining at Whole Hog at 8:30pm on Thursday the 8th with another two of our friends (another DNer would arrive later that night with her own party).

We were all together on the menu negotations - we were all prepared to share, we all wanted to try the salumi, we all were interested in the pastas, and we all knew we had to save room for dessert.

Our first course was a platter of dry-cured salumi and another platter of "potted and formed" meats. Each platter was for two people, so we divided up the slices of meat in order to each get a taste. Heather and I took a piece between us and our two friends shared the other one. We promptly forgot all the names of the different meats, but we can definitely say that they were all good shit. Midway through I realized that half-slices of meat were piling up on my plate and that I have fallen behind. Our two friends began to taunt me for being too slow and Heather urged me to eat faster so we didn't "lose."

That's when Whole Hog dinner became a contest of Team Date Night vs. Team ??? Heather and I had decided to call them Team Corporate since one is a lawyer and the other is a law student. But they chose to pay homage to the awesomest law firm name I've ever heard: Paine and Fears, apparently the two actual names of the firm's partners.

My competitive instinct began to kick in and I was determined to win the pasta round. I might be the slower eater on our team, but I'm clearly the more competitively driven. I popped the gnocchi del Cosentino with little pork meatballs into my mouth - the gnocchi and the meatballs were approximately the same spherical size and were divine. The gnocchi was denser than I expected but still tender. I absolutely adore stuffed pastas and the triangoli of pork shoulder "cooked around the clock" did not disappoint. The pasta was delicate but the filling hearty. I did slow down a little once I got to the spaghettini fritti with pork heart and wild mushroom ragu but that was because I never got a new knife to cut up the spaghettini (I don't think our harried server knew we were locked in a fierce battle or I think he would have brought me one in the interest of fairness). The most refreshing dish was the fregule with pork shoulder braised with Meyer lemon, taggiasca olives, and pine nuts - we all ate bites of this between the other pastas. Team Date Night held its own this round, so in a moment of hubris, I agreed to polish off what was left of a couple of the pastas. A mistake...

because the pasta comeback did not last, and Team Date Night began to shut down in the entree round. Part of this was due to a lack of excitement over these dishes. The zampone braised in saba, which was a deboned pig's trotter stuffed with sausage, arrived with the knuckles & hoof on the platter, and this sight began to disturb Heather. We both were disappointed by the sausage filling and I personally felt the skin was gluey. We also felt that the thin slices of spit-roasted Oliveto pork rib loin "ham" didn't pair well with the marsala sauce on top; plus the ham was overly chewy. However much Team Paine and Fears agreed with our assessment of the entrees, they still polished off their portions and Heather and I had to admit our full responsibility for our defeat. We revived briefly when our Date Night compatriot paid us a visit and brought over the amazingly delicious potatoes cooked in pork fat. But Team Paine and Fears had won.

They went on to dominate dessert as well. Out of all the dessert options, we had to go with the three involving pork products: the bacon apple charlotte with crème fraiche and quince syrup, the almond pithivier with malted chocolate and bacon fat ice cream (!), and a seville orange custard pie with lard crust. I loved the custard pie. I need to work with lard sometime. Mmm lard. We also loved the charlotte, and the bacon fat ice cream worked surprisingly well.

Even though Team Date Night got schooled by the lawyers, we had a great time at Oliveto's Whole Hog Dinner - an experience not to be missed. We congratulate Team Paine and Fears, and we welcome a rematch in the future. I woke up this morning still full.

Dine About Town: 1550 Hyde and Scott Howard

We have very little to say about our meals at 1550 Hyde Street Cafe and Scott Howard. Both were good, but unremarkable.

At 1550, we decided to veer from the prix fixe menu and just get the entrees we wanted. We had some roquefort cheese with grilled pears and walnuts which was a nice start along with a salad of frisee and arugula with apples and manchego. Heather and I both had the fresh paparadelle with milk-braised berkshire pork, spinach, and pecorino. This dish was good and I would get it again, but it was merely good. Sarah had these ricotta-fontina fritters with lentils, an interesting dish that yet was not as satisfying as the word "fritters" would lead you believe. We passed on dessert since we were all quite tired. In our view, the restaurant did a lot of things well, but we just didn't fall in love.

We were most excited for Scott Howard, but again we walked away underwhelmed. We were into the Dine About Town menu which gave us starters of a mache and frisee salad with apple, blue cheese, fennel, and chapagne vinaigrette and also smoked salmon with fingerling potato salad and green apple. They graciously allowed us to swap the short ribs with orzo mac and cheese in as an entree for the prix fixe, which I ordered and went halvsies with Heather's order of the Maine sea scallops with maitake mushrooms and potato puree and saffron sauce. Sarah had the scallops as well. Ethan had the Scottish salmon with shallot confit, hedgehog mushrooms, fingerling potatoes, and curry beurre blanc. For dessert, we either had the panna cotta with citrus salad or the warm chocolate cake. Again, everything was fine, but we had hoped for more.

Dining out for us is a treat, so Date Night has high standards and expectations. Yet at the same time, our expectations also stem from how these restaurants bill themselves. 1550 is a solid neighborhood restaurant that if we lived in the neighborhood we'd probably go to. But its ambitions to also be something of a destination were unrealized in our experience. Scott Howard seems to see itself very much as a destination, maybe less so now than before, but the meal we had there was not winning enough. We wouldn't tell anybody not to go to either of these restaurants, but we also wouldn't push anyone to try them.

If you want to show me you're ____, take me to ____.

The Date Night Primer on what the restaurants you choose for your dates say about you.

Are you...

Possessed of elegant and refined tastes as well as a fat wallet? Take me to Quince.
Do you also have a car? Take me to Manresa or Cyrus.

A quirky independent thinker? Take me to Canteen.
Looking to get me drunk in a tasteful way? Take me to Slanted Door or Coco500.

A massive tool? Take me to Iluna Basque.
A Eurotrash tool? Take me to Medjool.

Hip, but not a hipster? Take me to Range or Cesar.
A purist who isn't afraid to have some fun? Take me to Sebo.

A low-key guy who still appreciates quality? Take me to Luka's or Dopo.
A globetrotter who also likes the comforts of California? Take me to Dosa, Cafe Colucci, or Aziza.

Another First Date Tip

Don't curse at me.

I would think this would be obvious, but there you have it. I'm not saying you have to keep your language squeaky-clean, just don't direct it at me. You might think you're only joking, but actually you're being crass and rude. Is this really your A-game? Only the most charming apology can get you out of this one.

(and damn you if you come up with one!)