So I'm married...now what?: Restaurant Week!

I'll start off by apologizing. I did NOT take pictures of our food. I didn't forget, but here are the reasons why. First, some of it was just not that interesting to take a picture of. I'm not saying it wasn't good, but, well, we've all seen tons of plates that has meat and sides on it. They just weren't picture inspiring. Plus, the lights in both restaurants were dim (I'm not complaining about this) which makes taking a picture without a flash difficult...and I didn't want to pull out a flash and be way obvious.

We first went to Reata. The menu had one option for starters, a wedge salad with pico vinaigrette and crumbled bleu cheese. This was pretty yummy. I'm not a big fan of wedge salads, and am still not, but the rest of the elements were good. I just don't get the point of having a big chunk of lettuce you have to cut when having it separated to begin with helps mix the other elements for a better bite. But, that's just my opinion.

For the second course, I got the airline chicken breast with fire roasted hatch chili salad and Brandon got the 6 ounce bacon-wrapped beef tenderloin with porcini mushroom demi. Mine was alright. The chicken was just plain chicken. No real spices on it or anything. I don't remember the fire roasted hatch chili salad being spicy, which it sounded spicy, but it did have some yummy veggies to eat with it. Overall, I was underwhelmed with my meal. Brandon's tasted good, I don't remember how much he liked it, but he didn't seem very impressed, nor did he seem upset. What was upsetting is they overcooked his meat. We kinda think it was because there was a douchebag behind us who sent his meat back to have more heat put on it, so they ended up overdoing Brandon's. The waiter and manager apologized, and Brandon didn't want to deal with having another piece of meat cooked, but we were comp'ed nothing for having overcooked meat.

For dessert, I chose the molten chocolate cake and Brandon got the bread pudding tamale. He won dessert. The molten chocolate cake was good, very rich, and nothing very special from any other molten chocolate cakes. I expected this, though, but just add that to the underwhelming options for restaurant week they had. Brandon LOVED his dessert. It was amazing. I tasted it, and it was very good. That dessert helped make up for some of the other pitfalls. He also had the wine pairings, and I'm assuming they did decent with it because he never complained.

I looked at the regular menu while we were waiting to be served our drinks, and their prices for their specialty items were pretty high, but the other items didn't seem out of this world at all. I think that even though we were paying what we paid for the restaurant week menu, we should have gotten a little more out of it. It's not like they were losing that much money on us. I still had a great time, though, because it was going out and seeing a new location and food. Just, next time, I'd probably avoid Reata for restaurant week and just order off the regular menu.

The other restaurant was Lavendou. This was a much better experience! The only downsides was it was HOT! Of course the weather here is atrocious, but our table was sat between the hostess station and the kitchen, so we received heat from 2 directions. The overhead fans were too far to the side, over the main dining room (we were off to the side a tad), so they didn't help at all.

For starters, I got "Timbale aux Fruits de Mer," (mixed seafood with a chardonnay sauce served in a pastry shell). Brandon ordered "Pethivier d'Escargots a la Creme d'Ail," (snails with garlic cream). We both loved our starters. Coincidentally, they were both in pastry shells, but they were both good. The sauces were yummy.

For the meal, I ordered "Cotes de Porc Normande," (sauteed pork chops with a Calvados cream sauce). Brandon got "Steak au Roquefort," (beef tenderloin with Roquefort sauce). We both enjoyed this as well. The pork chop I had was quite thick, but cooked well. Can't say enough good about it. I ended up getting full pretty fast!

For dessert, I won this round! I ordered the "Crepe Souffle au Grand Marnier," (crepe souffle with raspberry coulis), and Brandon got "Flan au Cafe Pur Arabica Caramelise," (Arabian coffee flan with a caramelized top). Mine was so yummy. I could have used just a touch more raspberry sauce, but, it was very well balanced. Brandon enjoyed his, but he felt this was more of a custard than a flan (to which I said I thought a flan was a custard...he had an educated response, but I don't remember the specifics, let's just say he may be right). I could NOT eat all my dessert, so Brandon finished it off for me.

We definitely want to go back to this restaurant, after I can start drinking again, and have some more food, bread, and wine. And I'll say my apologies now. I did not add the appropriate accent marks the the French titles of the food. I do not have the patience this morning to figure that out!

Other than that excitement, the next big thing was graduate school started. I just got my grades for last week (which was all of 2 days but worth 30 flipping points out of I'm not sure how many, honestly, but week 2 is only worth 15). I got 30 out of 30 points! Yay

Also, the fantasy football draft for the league at work was last night. I left Brandon in charge of that. He feels great about the team he got, so I'm excited. I'm doing a free league with my friend (well, both Brandon and I are doing it) and that draft is Saturday. I think that league is still on...I haven't re-logged in a few days, but she'll tell me if things change.

I feel like things are crazy busy lately, so sorry for crappy blogging and long updates. Hopefully soon things will settle. Until then, here are some random pictures!