Mistral

After spending the afternoon with a friend of mine, we met up with Simon and headed out for dinner. I think I may have still been drunk at this time, as my entire dinner consists of blurry pictures. We visited Mistral; a little French bistro kind of place that Simon had a hunch would be many kinds of delicious. It was more expensive than I had expected it to be, mostly because of things like shelling out .50 for bottled mineral water, but the food was decent.

As an appetizer, we had a sort of crab cake and a platter of different duck dishes. The crab cake was incredibly light and the duck plate was plentiful. In the center of the plate was an onion relish, surrounded by 4 different kinds of duck appetizers, one of which was foie gras. Funny, I thought this would be something really exciting, but it was sort of ho hum and my inner animal rights activist made me tear up about the whole ordeal. I really enjoyed the relish though and the fresh sourdough bread that came with dinner was perfectly crusty, chewy and, well, sour doughy.

My entree was a New York steak with green peppercorn sauce. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I've made something very similar to this already this year. I almost remember what I made being better. Though the steak was perfectly cooked and the sauce was quite tasty, I always feel a little cheated when I order something I think is going to surprise or impress me somehow and I realize I already know how to make it myself, as soon as I figure out what in fact it was that I had made. Perhaps I should just stop learning new things so I will stop being so critical of my dining experiences.