Work & Class: My New Favorite Place

On Saturday night, while searching Yelp for a place to take my mom for her birthday dinner on Sunday, I came across Work & Class and exclaimed “Oh yeah, I forgot I’ve been wanting to try this place!”  I let Joey peruse the menu — which offers about six meat entrées + a bunch of sides to order a la carte — and just by looking at it, he declared it his “new favorite restaurant” and wanted to know why we couldn’t go that night as well as Sunday.

Well, come Sunday night, I think it was everyone’s “new favorite restaurant.”  I’ll be honest, it’s a small place, seating is mostly community style and it’s a little on the loud side — lots of voices in a small area will do that — but the wait staff is great, the drink menu is fun and the food is just all around amazing.  In other words, the reason this place has so many glowing five star reviews, is because it delivers.

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We showed up at 5:30 and though I totally expected to wait for a table, we were sat right away and were able to order off the Happy Hour menu before it ended at 6:00.  For the record, this is not a picture of the HH menu…

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Our waiter was awesome.  Mostly because my family can be a little indecisive at restaurants (and everywhere else…) and he was totally laid back and didn’t even pressure us to get a move on with the ordering.  Also, he suggested this amazing chile cheese fry special.  It was to die for!

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We ordered a smattering (I am experiencing a lot of joy from being able to use that word in a sentence!) of stuff.  We all tasted our own, raved about it, then tasted each others’ and raved about those too!  Everything was so unpretentious — 3 Bean Salad doesn’t sound like the most exciting thing ever — but executed perfectly!  I think between the five of us we tried the jerk chicken, the ceviche, the short ribs, the goat (<–Joey, the adventurous eater), cornbread, creamy polenta, 3 bean salad and mac and cheese.

Also, are you seeing that mini loaf of cornbread??  I think we all simultaneously said “awww!” when our waiter set it down on the table.  For the record, in addition to being the cutest thing ever, it was mouthwateringly good.

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Afterwards, despite everyone claiming to be stuffed, we ordered two desserts.  Which also come in small and large sizes.  The picture above is what the chocolate bread pudding looked like by the time we were done.  De-voured.  And the butterscotch pudding — which came out in the tiniest bundt pan known to man — was equally loved.

It’s official, I’m moving in here!

P.S. I may or may not have gone again on Tuesday night…

 

 

Weekend Things

Lookie what came in the mail on Friday!

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That would be RSVP cards and an invitation to my own bridal shower!  Eeeee!

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We met with our photographer after work on Friday to go over our day of timeline for the wedding.  I’ll be honest, I’ve been agonizing over that timeline for months WAY TOO LONG.  I mean it’s an incredibly important day and I just wanted to be proactive about setting it up perfectly.  #ControlFreak

Anyways, it all paid off when our photographer was totally impressed by how prepared we were.  As uptight as I was about the timeline, I trust our photographer so much that I have no specific photography requests.  She’s the pro so I’ll just let her do her thing 🙂

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On Saturday morning, I had a facial followed by a massage.  Rough life, right?  I scheduled a few of both of those things for the next two months.  Ya know, to keep myself relaxed.  I think it definitely worked on Saturday.  In between appointments, I had some time to kill so I walked five minutes to my old neighborhood and strolled the street I grew up on.  It was so weird looking at the old house and knowing someone else lived inside.  Sigh, I miss it.

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Post facial/massage lunch was picked up at Alfalfa’s.  The salad I put together was just alright but that Upstart Kombucha was delicious.  Even Joey thought so.

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Later, we brewed Root Beer!  Cool, huh?  In a perfect world, we would have cooked up our own extract, but sometimes shortcuts are where its at.  Like when you remember that you wanted to brew Root Beer three days before a family BBQ at your house.

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Followed by dinner and a movie on the couch — one that I LOVED and am hoping to post about later this week.  P.S. That’s that pizza we bought from TJ’s and Joey liked it so much that he says he’s willing to make a stop at the store just for another one.  What is happening?!

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I swear I was going to get up early on Sunday to fit in a run before it got too hot, but my bed just felt too nice and then there was the mention of pancakes and that whole running plan went right out the window.

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I can’t remember the last time we participated in Pancake Sunday so this breakfast was extra delightful.  I bought the biggest carton ever of blueberries and thought pancakes were the perfect way to put them to good use.

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Followed by a Root Beer tasting at 10 AM, naturally.

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I’ll completely bore you and say we spent the entire day cleaning and organizing our house.  All those projects that we were so adamant about doing right away finally got done… 10 months later.

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I love my little NOLA wall 🙂

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Also, these tape lines that we put up when we first moved in and were trying to decide on some mirrors to hang over our bed were finally replaced by some Georgia O’Keeffe prints that I bought at least four years ago…

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Yeah, that’s better.  Although I will miss the conversation starter that the blue tape provided 😛

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We ended the day with dinner to celebrate my Mom’s birthday.  She’s leaving for New Orleans this week and will be gone on her actual birthday so we celebrated a little early.  And we ate at an amazing restaurant — something else I’m hoping to post about later this week.

How was your weekend?