On Tuesday I celebrated the 5th anniversary of my 21st birthday, and I have many people to thank for making it such a wonderful day! I received many sweet cards and messages, enjoyed an amazing meal with Vlad, and ended the night in the way all good birthdays should end: drinking champagne with a group of great people :)
For dinner Vlady took me to Veritas, and although it was surprisingly empty, everything was quite excellent. Unfortunately I did not take pictures of anything other than the dessert.. I was too famished to whip out the camera for a photo op, so mostly everything was inhaled before a flash could have gone off. It happens.
My meal consisted of 2.5 appetizers (one being split with my lovely guest) plus dessert, and I have to say that I think that's the way to do it. I have always much preferred tapas style dining where you get numerous small plates over consuming one large entree. Variety is the spice of life, so why not try as many dishes as possible in one sitting?
The first course that we split was the crab salad, and not only was it delicious, but they were kind enough to evenly portion it out onto two plates (rather than setting one plate in the middle of the table for us to share). That earned major points in my book. The description of the crab salad says: lemon jam, black olives and arugula.. but that doesn't quite do it justice. It contained lots of sweet lump crab meat, over a small tapenade of black olives and a light topping of the peppery arugula. The lemon jam was on the side, but I ate every bite of it, and the whole thing came with a black olive-filo wrapping that they artfully split in two and made into an architectural piece on our plates. Highly recommended: this dish was summer perfection.
My second course was the baby spinach salad, and the description simply read: pancetta, point reyes blue cheese deviled eggs. When I ordered the dish the server mentioned that it was her favorite thing on the menu, so although the description was not in fact descriptive, I felt as though I had probably made a good decision. I was right. The spinach was lightly dressed with a mustard vinaigrette, and on the side were two deviled eggs split in half with a large pancetta wheel in each half. The eggs were filled with creamy blue cheesy yumminess that I could have eaten all night. Seriously, they were the best deviled eggs EVER. That combined with the crispy pancetta and dressed spinach was enough for me to realize why the server loved this dish so much. It was light, but so, so decadent!
For my third course I chose the sea scallop with foie gras, simply described only as that. This is the one dish that I'm bummed I didn't get a picture of, because the presentation was so elegant. It was one large sea scallop, split in half, with the seared foie gras in the middle, and a slice of roasted potato stacked in between as well. The whole thing was placed in the center of a large, white bowl and topped with a pan jus and some micro greens. No knife was required, and it really just melted in my mouth.. and while the whole thing was only about 4-5 bites, they were some pretty amazing bites indeed.
Dessert was kept simple (since my meal had been so rich up until then), and I had a scoop of basil sorbet and chocolate sorbet. These did not disappoint. The basil sorbet tasted exactly like fresh picked basil, with just the tiniest hint of sweetness, and the chocolate was also only slightly sweet but very rich in cacao (and topped with some crumbled cacao nibs). Oh, and they wrote a lovely message on the plate (see below):
So as you can tell, it was a lovely birthday full of great food! I would highly recommend Veritas as a special occasion restaurant; the food and service were both excellent.
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