Category: Food Talk

My Kind of Celebration

Lauren4 Comments

Monday was Joey and I’s anniversary.  When I mentioned this to my mom earlier that day, her only question was “Well did Joey get you flowers?!”  My answer?  “No, but he picked out a fancy restaurant in Denver and made reservations for dinner!”  To me, that’s ten times better than flowers.  I will always accept flowers of course, but spending the evening together on an outdoor patio with wine, delicious food and good conversation is the best way to my heart.

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We ate at Rioja, which is a “Mediterranean-inspired” restaurant on Larimer in Denver.  We were really lucky to have amazing weather for the occasion and to have a table on the patio open up just as we arrived.  Dining al fresco is the best, isn’t it?

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Goat cheese biscuit, lavender sourdough and whole wheat roll.  Plus soft butter!  Don’t you hate when they bring out chilled butter and you end up ripping a hole in your bread instead of spreading it?  And then this came out.

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Guys.  That’s a cube of bacon.  Seriously.  And I know it looks gross but it tasted like the most amazing piece of brisket!  It wasn’t insanely salt or insanely fatty.  In fact, it wasn’t fatty or salty at all!  Are you as amazed as I clearly was?  And that curried garbanzo puree underneath was to die for.  When I saw this appetizer on the menu I said “I AM NOT GETTING THAT BACON.”  Followed by, “Wait, how can we not get that bacon?!”  We also ordered the artichoke tortelloni appetizer and it was amazingly good.

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I have to commend Rioja on it’s timing.  Joey and I hate when restaurants rush your entrée out while appetizers are still being eaten.  We had a good 20 minutes (our waiter warned us when we ordered our entrées that Joey’s dish would take that long, so we were prepared) between apps and dinner plates to people watch (Larimer is a busy street!), sip our drinks and take in everything around us.

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I ordered the seared sea scallops and would you just look at all those components!  I loved just about everything — from the black truffle vinaigrette to the grilled ramps — except the actual scallops.  To be fair, I’ve never had a chef-prepared scallop and mostly ordered the dish because I wanted to know what good ones taste like.  I discovered that I just don’t really like the taste/texture of scallops.  Oh well.

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Joey got the pan roasted chicken and it was HUGE!  He brought about half of this plate home, which is very unusual for him.  There’s a bacon-golden raisin bread pudding underneath that I kept sneaking bites of, but as good as that was, the chicken was the definite star.  It was so moist and flavorful.  I had serious entrée envy.  Luckily Joey was willing to share.

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The chicken also came with braised Tuscan kale that neither of us cared for.  When we had our food boxed Joey requested that that kale not be included and our waiter smirked at us.  And that’s the one part of the restaurant experience I wasn’t that happy about.  The waiter filling our bread and water needs was great, but our actual waiter was a little bit condescending.  Maybe it was just a fluke.

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And even though we were pretty full, there’s always room for dessert.  Especially when it’s teeny white chocolate cheesecake bites!  We weren’t totally on board with the toasted black sesame ice cream (it was a bit gritty…) but the “sesame nougatine” which I described as sesame granola and Joey lovingly described as birdseed was a deliciously crunchy contrast to the cheesecake.

Another fun restaurant experience and another year under our belts!

One question, would you have ordered the bacon??

 

A Whole Foods Rant

Lauren4 Comments

I caused a fuss at Whole Foods last night.

After convincing Joey for the millionth night in a row to go out for dinner instead of making a nice homecooked meal with the fresh produce that’s slowly decaying in our fridge, we headed out to our nearby Whole Foods.  Which is actually so tiny that employees at the giant Boulder store refer to it as “Half Foods.”  I spotted a “Palak Paneer Naan Sandwich,” marked VEGETARIAN in the cold case and asked if they could warm it up for me.  All was fine and dandy until I realized whatever was in the the sandwich looked and tasted an awful lot like chicken.

I’m not vegetarian but I’d be willing to bet a lot of people in Whole Foods in Colorado are, so I took the sandwich back to the deli counter.  I alerted an employee behind the counter to what had happened and this is when things got weird.  Another employee asked what was wrong and the two of them sort of stared at each other, holding the VEGETARIAN sign and then asked “So do you want another one?”  Confused, I said yes and then awkwardly stood there while I waited for it to be heated up and for someone to act like giving someone who asked for a vegetarian dish a meat dish was a big deal.  No one did.

I genuinely dislike confronting management about anything, but after talking to Joey I decided to ask a nearby cashier if there was someone in customer service I could speak to.  I explained the situation to him and he grabbed his team leader, who came right over, tried to offer me a new sandwich then rushed away to “speak to his team.”  I told him I felt really bad and that I wasn’t a vegetarian, but my concern was that I could have been and no one had apologized or even thought it was a big deal, to which he very passionately explained that Whole Foods holds itself to a higher standard and people with dietary restrictions are large part of their market so he really needed to address his team

He also didn’t apologize.

The whole thing was very strange and also not the first time I have purchased something marked VEGETARIAN at Whole Foods and found myself eating meat.

End rant.

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Have you ever faced a situation like this?

What would you have done?

Do you have a hard time making a complaint in a restaurant, etc.?