TeamSD: Adventures of Lawyer Girl and Demian Man

When Demian and I found out yesterday that the Bacchus Group (the force behind The Village Pub, Pizza Antica, and Spruce) had just opened up the Mayfield Bakery & Cafe in Palo Alto’s Town & Country Village, we could not resist.  As we learned upon entering the restaurant, neither could half of Palo Alto.

Around 8 p.m. on a Friday night, it was packed to the gills with yuppie academic and business types – recession, schmecession.  Although the MBC doesn’t take reservations, you can call 30 minutes ahead for a table.  Expect to wait longer, though, before you can be seated.  Last night, a space at the bar opened up before our table did, so we gladly took a seat there – ultimately, it may have been more roomy than the cozy booths and tables (none of which seemed to accommodate more than four people…tops).

I’m very much a fan of the decor – lots of exposed wood, white marble, clean lines.  New American, like the food.  Comfortable and (business) casual – although, as Demian astutely pointed out, it’s unlikely that they’d turn away a dude in shorts and Tevas…and Demian didn’t feel too out of place in his graphic tee, zip up hoodie, and jeans.

Food was excellent, for all the same reasons the food at The Village Pub is excellent – seasonal ingredients, classic yet  clever flavor profiles.  In addition to complimentary bottled water, I opted to take my dinner with a glass of Kabinett Riesling (cold, sweet and refreshing), while Demian had an outstanding vanilla milkshake (!), intense in vanilla bean flavor and totally drinkable thickness.  For appetizers, Demian selected the very popular golden, roast beet salad with shaved fennel and yogurt dressing.  Even I, who hates beets, thought this salad was delicious – beautifully sweet golden beets, nice crunch of the fennel shavings, and refreshing, slighty sour tang of the yogurt.  I chose the grilled shrimp, pancetta, and frisee salad and was very impressed by the hot, flavorful shrimp.  The creamy dressing was also so good that I used my fatty pancetta to sop it up.  For my entree, I ordered the penne with whipped cauliflower, caper berries, pinenuts and raisins – this was good.  First of all, it came out piping hot (just the way I like it).  I really enjoyed the combination of the sour caper berries, sweet raisins, nutty pinenuts, creamy and not too salty cauliflower puree, and al dente pasta.  This is the new comfort food.  Demian was less impressed by his pork shoulder dish, which featured – to his horror – brussel sprouts.  We were both expecting the meat to be much more tender and moist than it was, but it may just be the nature of roasted pork shoulder (versus something like braised pork or pork loin).  Finally, dessert.  When Demian and I didn’t order anything to drink with dessert, our waiter/bartender insisted that we try (on the house) this muscat dessert wine.  I’ve never been a fan of dessert wine – usually it’s too sticky sweet or too alcoholy.  This wine was the best thing I’ve ever tasted – sweet but not syrupy, full of ripe peach flavor (my favorite fruit!).  I could drink this all day, any time of day.  I would come back just for that wine.  Unfortunately, it very much surpassed my dessert.  I had high hopes for my sour cherry bread pudding, but was disappointed that the top of pudding was so hard to chew.  Demian ordered the house specialty, which is a very nice carrot cake with a not-too-sweet caramel sauce.  I’m not a fan of carrot cake generally, which I usually find too sweet and sugary – this was a much lighter, subtler version of this favorite American treat.

As for service, I was very pleasantly surprised, especially since this is a relatively new restaurant, and it’s only to expected that kinks would need to be worked out.  I found the hostess, wait staff, and bartenders very gracious and attentive, despite how busy the evening was.  Our water glasses never went empty, and I have to give some major brownie points for the complimentary glass of dessert wine – clearly this guy had been paying attention to what I was eating and drinking that night to know that I would love this wine.  There was something of a wait between our appetizers and main courses, but the fact that the entrees came out piping hot (and mine, at least, absolutely perfect) made up for that fact entirely.  After a hard week, I found the entire dining experience totally therapeutic.  I will definitely be back for more “sessions.”

Another excellent Valentine’s Day, if I do say so myself.  I’ve decided (and I think Demian has discovered) that Valentine’s Day really means “Shower-Siu-with-gifts-and-do-things-she-wants-to-do-that-you-wouldn’t-otherwise-do-in-a-million-years” Day.

V-Day actually started for me on Friday the 13th, with a delivery of beautiful roses and a choc-o-late box   I didn’t remember to take a picture at the office, so here is a crappy camera-phone picture of the roses after I’d brought them home:

The best thing about Valentine’s Day being on a Saturday is that I can get Demian to do a bunch of stuff haha.  First up on the agenda – drag Demian to “He’s Just Not That Into You.”  It made me giggle to myself when Demian asked the ticket lady: “We’ll take two tickets to see…’He’s Just Not That Into You’…*sigh*”  It was, as Demian will tell you, a pretty crappy movie, but one that I thoroughly enjoyed!  It was like watching “Sex and the City” – which is a terribly written, totally cliche kind of show, but riveting because women just eat this junk up.  I was pleasantly surprised by Justin Long’s performance, since usually I hate that guy…I’m a PC, dammit!  Basically, the movie was about how stupid girls are and how big a-holes men are.  Like I said – “Sex and the City.”

After the movie, we went to CostPlus to see if we could find some decorative throw pillows for the house.  Demian pretty much hated them all, so we left empty handed…(until today woohahaha)

For dinner, we went to The Village Pub, which has become our old standby for Valentine’s Day – since I didn’t want to punish Demian too much by forcing him to drive to the city.  A really great 4-course dinner overall – very refreshing lobster, golden beet, and blood orange salad, following by a Jerusalem artichoke soup (very truffle-y and smoky), with an entree of petrale sole (really perfectly cooked and seasoned) accompanied by seared hearts of palm and red grapefruit sabayon (love the tropical flavors), and rounded out by a cute little baked Alaska.  The Kabinett Riesling I had with dinner was also verrry tasty – just sweet enough and ice cold, which is the way I like it.  Very satisfying overall.  Obligatory restaurant picture!

So glad my hair is finally growing out…so much for quarter-life crisis haircuts.

Today was also very relaxing, and much more productive too.  Went to La Tartine for a little breakfast, then to the Nissan dealership to check out the Skyline import that Demian has been drooling over.  No no, don’t worry – we’re not going to buy it.  At least, I’m not going to buy it!  Then hit up Pier 1 Imports, where I did end up finding some very cute pillows to go with our couch in the “piano room”:

I’m still looking for some cute blue and white pillows to go into our entryway, on the rattan chairs there.  I found these perfect pillows online, but they’re $150 each, and there’s no freaking way I am spending that much money on a throw pillow…so the hunt is on.  Here’s the inspiration:

I’ve found a couple of inexpensive alternatives online, but it looks like they’re all temporarily out of stock…figures.  Ah well!  I’ll keep looking.

Since Demian had some sort of World of Warcraft thingie tonight at 7:30, we decided to stay home for dinner, so I made some chili – perfect rainy day food, if you ask me.   Cleaned up and then came upstairs to do some work, since this week will be pretty busy with me having to report for jury duty on Wednesday.  Hrmmm…I feel like there’s something else productive I did today but I can’t quite…OH CRAP, forgot the laundry in the dryer!

Gotta go!

I am so used to writing in bullet-point fashion at work that it’s starting to bleed over into my blogging.  A pretty jam-packed, but satisfying weekend:

• Tony and Jenn, good friends of ours from L.A., swung by for a quick visit.  Tony and I met at Hastings in Corporations, and he quickly became like a big brother to me.  Jenn is his awesome wife   Tony stayed with us Friday night after his tax conference concluded and we stayed up ’til 1 a.m. just chatting.  So nice to have him back in the Bay, even if only for a short time.  The next morning, we picked up Jenn from SFO and had some great dim sum at Hong Kong Flower Lounge.  Turns out 11 a.m. is primo dim sum time – no one’s there yet, and so we get first dibs on everything!

• Went to Gary Danko on Saturday for Mom’s (as in Demian’s mom) b-day.  Gary Danko is definitely our favorite restaurant in the city, so it was nice to be back.  I was the teensiest bit disappointed, since I didn’t think the food was as good as it’s been in the past – not sure if it was just the particular selections I made or if the chef was having an off night.  We’ll have to go back again, just to make sure hehe.

• Just got back from Michael’s, where we put our 55% off custom framing coupon to good use – I’m framing a couple of custom comic art pieces that Demian bought for me, which I’ll hang in my office.  I’ve decided that everyone at work is a big nerd like me anyway, so it won’t matter much that I have a bunch of comic art.  After all, my neighbor is a Trekkie heh.

• Just YouTube’d how to cook chorizo.  I have one more pizza crust to use, and Demian insisted that we have chorizo on our pizza this time.  I’m thinking pepperoni, chorizo, mushroom, and red onion pizza?

Off to Houston on Tuesday to defend my first deposition.  It’s going to be in the high 70s over there!  And probably as humid as a sauna…oh well!  I’m looking forward to next weekend – Valentine’s Day at The Village Pub (fav restaurant down HERE), “He’s Just Not That Into You” (woohahah – thank God for Hallmark holidays…Demian can’t refuse!), and a much-needed long weekend.

Well, better get started on that chorizo!

1.  He took me shopping yesterday (albeit against his will) to go find a dress that I randomly decided that I have to have.  And that I ultimately decided to buy online lol.

2.  He put together our new Scandinavian Designs console table this weekend:

3.  He uploaded our slideshow from the wedding reception so that I could share with some soon-to-be-brides who are planning for their big day.

4.  While I was sleeping last night, he (without my even asking) fixed this stupid Google re-direct virus that had infected my computer and was making all my Google searches lead me to advertising links.

++++

Unrelated to why Demian is awesome-o, I made lasagna last weekend!  I was very proud of myself because it took forever and made me feel very domestic: