For those of you who don't know me IRL, my 21st birthday is only a week away! Naturally, I've planned out a day/evening of fun birthday freebies, delicious cocktails and five-beer samplers.
Since my good friend Katie (who you met during my Jerusalem Garden post) will be leaving to study abroad in London before this pivotal day, she implored that we must go out to preemptively celebrate before she leaves.
We settled on dinner at The Grange, a main street joint who's schtick is producing gourmet dishes from locally-sourced food. Now, I know that many restaurants today advertise locally-grown cuisine, but most can get away with saying that even if only 30% of their food is local. I believe I read somewhere that The Grange sources nearly 90% of its food from local vendors, which is astronomically unbelievable.
Since my good friend Katie (who you met during my Jerusalem Garden post) will be leaving to study abroad in London before this pivotal day, she implored that we must go out to preemptively celebrate before she leaves.
We settled on dinner at The Grange, a main street joint who's schtick is producing gourmet dishes from locally-sourced food. Now, I know that many restaurants today advertise locally-grown cuisine, but most can get away with saying that even if only 30% of their food is local. I believe I read somewhere that The Grange sources nearly 90% of its food from local vendors, which is astronomically unbelievable.
Madison (left) and Katie (right) settled down at our cozy table and surveyed todays offerings. Since the menu changes often to reflect the foods that are in-season, it's always a surprise to see what's on the plate for the day.
Mallory and I posed for the camera.
We started out with a small plate of fried chickpeas. Light and crackling bubbles of deliciousness oozing with spice and flavor. I will definitely be attempting to make a pan-fried version of this in the near future!
For the main dishes, Mallory selected the perch and veggie medley...
I grabbed a steaming bowl of gnocchi, veggies and michigan shrimp doused in pesto. Katie and I, being connoisseurs of gnocchi, were moaning over how deliciously melt-in-your mouth these little lumps of potato dough were. Simply ah-mazing.
Katie opted for the grilled rainbow trout with mushrooms and corn relish...
While Madison snagged a spectacular plate of roasted duck breast in a corn puree and peach relish.
I'd never tried duck before, and Madison was nice enough to let me try a small piece. It was very meaty and very gamey - I felt like a huntress who'd just brought home her kill for a feast.
Seeing as it was an almost-birthday celebration, we had to grab some dessert. Fortunately for us, The Grange's dessert menu includes a lovely sampler platter of 4 mini desserts and a giant mug of coffee.
From left to right, this platter comes with some sort of delicious berry dish, a watermelon granita, a mini-drumstick with homemade ice cream in the center (I grabbed that one!) and a cantaloupe sherbet.
Within five minutes, our dessert tray looked like this:
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