So after not really going out by ourselves in a long while, we decided to go out on a date last night. We decided to head over to the Bonefish Grill.
So we started off with the Saucy Shrimp ("Sautéed in a Lime Tomato Garlic sauce with Kalamata olives and Feta cheese.", which was quite good. The combination of the flavors of the feta, olives, lime and shrimp was really quite nice. The presentation was also very nice to. I had thought about bringing my camera to the restaurant, but I ended up not doing so. Our waitress also brought us over some fresh bread. The bread was...well...bread. It was warm and probably straight out of a heater or maybe even the oven, but it was just a fairly bland bread, certainly not of the quality I've grown used to. It did have a nice crust ans was good for dipping into the sauce of the shrimp (the oil they gave us for dipping was fairly bland).
Then we moved on to our salads. The house salad ("Crisp chopped greens, tomatoes, Kalamata olives, heart of palm and pine nuts. Tossed with citrus herb vinaigrette."), was ok, but nothing too special. The "greens" were basically iceberg lettuce that was dressed up with the other ingredients. This was, however, my first experience with a heart of palm (which was good).
Next up I had some of their Corn Chowder with Lump Crab. This was...missing something. Itself it had a nice taste to it, but it needed something, like to be simmered with pepper, to give it an extra taste and complexity.
Then we had our main courses. I had Ahi Tuna with Pan Asian sauce (A teriyaki glaze, with a bed of sautéed spinach, and a drizzle of wasabi cream.) and Shannon had a special Rockfish Thermador. Now I'm not a huge judge of fish, since I don't have it that often (since we are in the middle of the country and fresh fish is harder to come by). I liked my Tuna. I liked Shannon's Rockfish better (so did she). My tuna had a nice sort of done crust on the outside where they had cooked it on the grill, and then it turned flaky, and then more pink on the inside. Again, I don't know if this was on purpose or not, but I think tuna is good from raw to cooked (even canned), so I was pleased. Although the wasabi cream seemed to be have not much wasabi in it at all...it took me specifically gathering up some on my plate to get any sort of heat out of the cream. The Garlic mashed potatoes that we both had as sides were good, they were covered with a parsley butter sauce, which was a bit disturbing to me at first, since the potatoes looked shiny. The carrots they had were actually really good (Shannon's not a big fan of anything but raw carrots).
For dessert, we split a slice of Deep Dish Key Lime Pie ("Graham cracker and roasted pecan crust, topped with fresh whipped cream."). This was pretty good. It actually made me want to make key lime bars (like lemon bars, only with key lime). Since the chain is based out of Florida, it didn't surprise me to much that this was as good as it was. They said it was "homemade" though what that means, I don't know. Made in the store? Made at someone's house? Made by hand in bakery? Who knows. Anyways, it was good, and certainly a nice end to the meal.
During the meal I had two glasses of La Crema Russian River Valley Pinot Noir, which I liked. Makes me want to explore more of their wines, although, their online store, wasn't very helpful in providing me a price...(Since I wrote this morning, they have updated their site, much more helpful).
The meal and wine came out to be just under $100 without the tip. So it was fair...I would've been happier if it was $20 cheaper.
Afterwards, we wandered around the mall for a while, and then went and saw Hot Fuzz, which was quite funny and headed home (after picking up some milk and kitty litter, which cause me to joke that this whole evening was an excuse to pick up kitty litter).
