I'm going through an Italian period : Ciao Baci in February and Capriccio in March. Our friendly server brought us a variety of breads : normal crusty, white bread, thin "breadsticks" which are like the free ones you can get at Zaza's, crunchy, fried cheese and olive bread.
My parents and I shared a Caesar salad. For the most part, it was a generic Caesar salad, but the one distinction was a hint of lemon. Maybe it's normal in some places, but I've eaten a lot of Caesar salads, and this was the first time that I've tasted lemon of any kind in the dressing.
As far as the main course goes ... My filet mignon was cooked as ordered, which is astonishingly rare, but I didn't need to ask for medium well - I could have asked for medium because the grill plate kept it cooking. By the end, it was well done. The pepper sauce, which came in a white, square cup seen behind the grill plate, was more sweet than spicy. In fact, there was such a strong brown sugar taste that it should have been called "brown sugar sauce" instead. But I'm not complaining because it was really, really good!
The veal marsala sauce had a very distinct flavour. It was easy to immediate taste the sautéed mushrooms and the Marsala wine, which is where the sauce gets its name. The wine made the large noodles - and the whole dish really - rather strong.
The honey and lime salmon tasted as described ... like honey and lime. The addition of a lemon, which was wrapped and tied in a cute little bag for the diner to add more juice if they wished, enhanced the flavours, especially since the sauce was made from lemon and lime. The salmon itself was rather juicy - another culinary feat. Too often, salmon tastes fine, but it's cooked too much, which makes it drier than sawdust.
Finally, for dessert, we ordered a mango sorbet, a molten Godiva chocolate cake and a vanilla crème brûlée. Briefly, the mango sorbet was sour and bitter. In a bite, I knew that it wasn't an Asian mango, which tend to be much sweeter, or, if it was, it was much too young. Personally, I think that it was mature, and simply not an Asian mango. In any case, I regret ordering it - a tiny failure in a great meal.
The molten Godiva chocolate cake also was not sweet. However, the vanilla ice cream made up for its lack of sweetness, and the two flavours complemented each other well. I will always be perplexed by how they make this cake ...
And I've saved the best for last. In fact, it's not hard to say which was better between this vanilla crème brûlée and the mango sorbet. Like I already said, I wish I'd rather have had this because it was delicate and sweet. It was like paradise in my mouth. The little cookies which came with it were too dry and the strawberry jam inside it was firm and thick - well, actually, if it hadn't the appearance of jam nor been part of the cookie, I'd think it was a red tar.
But, overall, it was a splendid meal.
