Thursday, January 12, 2012

ABC & Graves

A very dear close friend of mine has been told recently that she has Graves disease. What's graves, click HERE. It's been pretty rough on her and so I wanted to do something a little extra special to let her know I'm always here for her no matter what...the best way I know how to do that is with...FOOD :)

Let me tell you, it helps to have connections to get into this spot (thankful that I have that) :)
 
Atmosphere at ABC Kitchen is trendy, minimal with very clean lines.  I liked that the space featured the food and not how many adornments they could put out to make it "pretty"

It was just a party of 2 that night but man we ate like a party of 6, aside from the main dish, becasue my dining partner doesn't eat pork, the restaurant kindly split the other dishes we ordered in 2 when we mentioned we were sharing everything, big brownie point there ;)


First course:
~ Roasted Carrot And Avocado Salad crunchy seeds, sour cream and citrus...I think by far my favorite dish there.  The carrots were seasoned with some cumin/coriander spice and then roasted to OMG melt in your mouth goodness!



~  Roasted Kabocha Squash Toast fresh ricotta and apple cider vinegar...on a rustic piece of sourdough toast again seasoned very well and  the combo of the light ricotta and the semi dense squash paired nicely together



~ Roasted Cauliflower. Onion and walnut crumbs, fried egg ....Again another stellar dish, the Cauliflower was roasted just till fall off the fork tender and worked very well with the warm sunnyside up egg on top






Second Course:
~ Housemade spaghetti with chanterelle and parmesean...this was my least favorite sad to say...the dish was overpoweringly salty! we tried tasting each individual piece of the dish and all tasted fine seperately but combined them into a bite and it was waaay salty!  This was the reason why I didn't give the restaurant 5 stars...when we were served this dish, 2 different waiters came by and asked how it was and both times we mentioned it was way too salty and both times neither of them offered to take it back or anything..boo on you servers!





Third Course:
~ Roast suckling pig w/plum and smoke bacon marmelade and braised turnips...OMG that crackling skin was to die for!  the pork was moist and again melted the minute it was in my mouth.  Turnips have a bad rep but I so love them, especially when they are the small teeny baby versions, sweet and butter!



Overall a great experience and pricing was right as well. We were way too stuffed to even fathom looking at the dessert menu, but next time we'll have to tackle that and review it as well :)