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Date night at The Spence

I know I’ve been absent for a while. Jeff and I both got the flu last month so we’ve both been generally tired and “off” for quite some time now. After an entire month spent indoors eating dry toast for dinner and never seeing the light of day, it was finally time we got out into the world again.

This past weekend we took a date night to The Spence, one of Richard Blais’s newish restaurants in Atlanta. We decided to do our usual thing and order a bajillion small plates in lieu of entrees so that we could try more of the menu, which sounded incredible.

Started off with buffalo sweetbreads garnished with both creamed and powdered bleu cheese and a few sprigs of celery leaf. These were extraordinarily spicy, but still really soft and delicious.

Buffalo sweetbreads

Next was the porcini mushroom and shortrib pasta. It was pretty good, with chewy pasta and a runny egg. There was very little shortrib though, and I think the mushrooms were added as a powder because the flavor was there but they were nowhere to be seen.

Porcini and shortrib pasta

Then harissa spiced beef tartare with fried quail eggs and tater tots. This one was so yummy! I loved the tater tots standing in for the requisite toast, but there really should have been a lot more of them. We ended up just eating several spoonfuls of raw beef towards the end there.

Harissa beef tartare with tater tots

Another delicious dish suffering from a lack of sufficient toast: foie gras with Japanese green peaches. There was other stuff on it too that wasn’t mentioned on the menu. Some shallot slices that tasted like they were marinated in the peach juice, something that looked like yuzu gel but tasted like nothing, possibly crushed hazelnuts, and a pickled olive that took me by surprise. It was really tasty, but again there wasn’t enough toast to pile it all on so we ended up eating almost half of it straight up, which was not my favorite thing ever. Those little green peaches were incredible though.

Foie with green peaches and brioche

Jeff was full so we opted to skip to dessert. I could’ve eaten one more dish but I just hadn’t been too impressed by anything so far so I chose to skip it. We got the yuzu semifreddo with peach sorbet and chili oil….

Yuzu semifreddo and peach sorbet with chili oil

It was gross.

The semifreddo had almost no discernable flavor and the chili oil was CRAZY overpowering. The menu also didn’t mention that there would be flavorless cracker crumbs and bitter cacao nibs, which is strange because chocolate is a common allergen and should always be mentioned up front. There was also one lone sprig of cilantro that completely freaked me out when I wasn’t expecting it. None of the flavors in this dessert went together at all, it was really bizarre and easily the worst dessert I’ve ever had.

All in all, I wasn’t too impressed with The Spence. It was incredibly noisy, so noisy that you kind of have to just give up on talking to each other until you leave. Our waiter kind of sucked too, he acted like he had just decided that we weren’t going to order much from the beginning and that we were wasting his time. Maybe he was just having a bad night but his mood really seemed targeted at us. And maybe this is a weird thing to critique, but I hated the off-center plating of most of the dishes. I know it was intentional, but it didn’t appear intentional. It always just looked like the food had slid to one side of the plate in between the kitchen and the table, made me feel like I was eating rejects.

So, not my favorite Atlanta restaurant. Sucks because there were so many yummy-sounding things on the menu that I wanted to come back and try, but now not so much.

Moving on…

We parked the car at home after dinner and walked into Decatur looking for a place to grab a nice cocktail or two and ended up at The Pinewood. We basically had the whole bar to ourselves, so we really were able to relax and talk and enjoy our drinks leisurely.

I started with the Pinewood cup. It’s white whiskey, mint, sugar, bitter lemon soda, rhubarb bitters, and seasonal fruit. It was fruity and delicious with just enough booze.

Pinewood cup

Jeff got a Brown Derby which includes bourbon, honey, and fresh grapefruit juice. He always orders well, I liked his better than mine!

Brown derby

We were there long enough to try two more cocktails. He had a Dark and Stormy and I had a Porch Punch. The punch had peach and anise flavors; I really enjoyed it. Jeff’s cocktail was extra gingery from its house made ginger beer.

We’ve actually been to The Pinewood once before with some friends, and I even took photos but never got around to blogging about it. The food we had on that occasion was all excellent. I remember some really stand-out fried green tomatoes and the creamiest broad bean hummus.

So if you’re ever in Decatur, definitely give The Pinewood a try. The Spence though, I’m not sure if I would recommend as much.

It was a really nice date night though. I’m glad we’re both feeling better and getting out and about again!

For my fellow Atlantans: What restaurant do you recommend we try next?

For Everyone: What’s the worst dessert you’ve ever had?

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B12 update

I’m still savoring those incredible heirloom tomatoes. Yesterday I had one chopped up on a salad and it was as sweet as strawberries.

Another item I picked up to try was blueberry butter. I was SO excited when I saw it. I love apple butter and pumpkin butter, so what could go wrong? Well, I tried it on my oatmeal this morning and wouldn’t you know, there is absolutely zero blueberry flavor. It’s basically just tastes like heavily spiced applesauce. It’s still really good, but no blueberry!

Oatmeal with blueberry butter

And here’s another failed purchase at the farmer’s market the other day. I knew we were about to run out of fish sauce, so I picked up a giant bottle of my favorite Shrimp Brand sauce, only to discover another humongous bottle in the bottom of the pantry that I bought a few weeks ago and forgot about.

Too much fish sauce

That is a lot of fish sauce. Luckily this is a staple item in our house, so we will get through it all, just slowly.

But enough about fails, how about a win?

You may recall that I’ve been trying to correct a B12 deficiency with a high dose supplement for the last few months. Well, on Monday I went in for a blood test to see if my numbers were up. Check out the stellar results!

B12 lab results

1415! That’s up from 180 just earlier this year! I know it’s flagged as too high because it’s outside the normal range, but my doctor told me that there’s really no such thing as a B12 level that’s too high. She’s never heard of it being harmful for anyone.

I just ordered more of the B12 supplement I’ve been taking, but I’ve downgraded to a 1000mcg dose that I may only take every other day. I am so glad this worked for me, nothing else has in years!

That’s my good news for the day, tell me some good news of yours!

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Precious heirlooms

I haven’t blogged about my eats in a loooooong time. I really wanna get this blog back on track with discussing food and sharing recipes, so without further ado, I present to you…my lunch. Thrilling, I know.

But I was certainly thrilled to come across a big glorious pile of heirloom tomatoes at Whole Foods yesterday, all piled up like jewels in a treasure chest. The colors, patterns, and irregular shapes are a feast for the eyes. I especially love the ones with lots of ridges and pleats, like a shiny swatch of silk tucked and pinned around a soft globe.

Pretty heirlooms

I sliced up one of the purple-tinted ones over a tartine of smashed avocado sprinkled with dulse flakes. I like to say tartine because it sounds fancier than open-faced sandwich. 😉

Heirloom and avocado tartine

I salted the tops and cracked over some black pepper and served them with a donut peach and kombucha. I know it looks small, but I tend to eat lunch in two phases. I’ll probably have some goat’s milk yogurt with peanut butter protein granola later.

OMG these tomatoes are so good! And this is coming from someone who typically does not enjoy raw tomatoes. But these are so sweet and juicy that I’m reminded that tomatoes are actually a fruit. And they’re not mealy or watery like so many tomatoes are. Totally worth the Whole Foods price tag.

Have you ever had an heirloom tomato?

Are there and veggies you can only eat cooked/don’t enjoy raw?