birthday in bologna/imola

Hiii. So Dad and Steph, I told you I would put pictures up from my birthday dinner gift. The lighting in the restaurant was not very good and the pictures aren't very good but I swear the food was way better than it looks in the pictures! (My friends said it was the best meal they'd ever had). I tried for a while to fit the pictures in this post, but I'm going to have to make the next post all of the pictures because the formatting for this blog is a pain in the butt.

We had the most ridiculous taxi ride there in history. Our driver was flying down the highway and yelling in Italian about how blocked the highway was, etc etc. He didn't speak any English and was making all kinds of small talk as he did such things as back up down the wrong side of the road and get stuck in a ditch...and make us late for dinner.

When we finally got there, we got a welcome bottle of champagne, which felt strange but great to be treated like that. We got a different type of wine for each course (which was also included in the fixed menu). We had that champagne, a white, rose, and red. I meant to take a picture of the bottles because the wines were fantastic but I didn't get any. =[.

First was an asparagus soup with a little vegetable cake in the middle. Asparagus isn't my favorite, but it was delicious.

Next was a tiny little pot of langoustine in a thick yellow curry that was my favorite dish of the whole meal. It was tiny but unbelievably good.

The third course was something that my friends and I stared at for most likely longer than it took us to eat it. It was an egg that seemed like it was fried on the outside but once you got through the crust, it seemed to be hard-boiled. Then, once you got through the hard-boiled part the yolk was still oozing on the inside. My favorite part of the picture I took is that now everyone can see how weird the eggs here are--the yolks are such a bright yellow. My friends and I were split between the egg and the langoustine as our favorites, especially because it came on top of mashed potatoes, and I mean...who doesn't love mashed potatoes?!

Fourth was the lightest gnocchi I've ever had in a really light but delicious white sauce with tomatoes. Now that I'm looking at the menu, it says the sauce was some kind of lard, which is kind of disappointing but doesn't make the gnocchi any less delicious.

The fifth course was a really delicate white fish that according to the menu, was in an olive oil and cream of onion sauce. It was perfectly seared and crunchy on the outside and fell apart on this inside. Around it was drizzled sauce that tasted like it was made from garlic and sweet red bell peppers.

Sixth was a duo of lamb. For the first time ever, I had a piece of fried lamb. It sounds like the fried-ness would be overpowering but it was delicious and was balanced really well with the taste of the lamb. The second piece of lamb was a simple but really well done roasted leg of lamb in a tiny bit of rosemary and olive sauce. I'm not sure if I could eat lamb every day as I could with dumplings, but I could probably eat it three times a week and still love it.

Barely able to fit any more into our stomachs, the desserts came. There were three different plates, all with different desserts. One had a traditional rum-soaked Italian cake (I have no idea what it's called)--it's the one that looks like an apple in the picture, wild strawberries, some type of gelato that I can't remember, and a raspberry cream dessert. That plate also had caramelized bananas, a molten chocolate cake, awesome coffee gelato, and something in a shooter glass that I didn't like that tasted like rum and nothing else. The third dessert was an almond brittle that was so toasted and delicious.

Anyway, that concludes our meal. Thanks so much for the great experience!

Love you

By the way, the picture of the silkscreened art with the guy lying on his stomach says "How much I have eaten!" and he's rubbing his belly. I felt it was appropriate to take a picture of it on our way out.