BUT this year I was tricked by Larkin's in Eagle Rock into attending their Valentine's Day dinner.
I'm on an assorted number of email lists for restaurants, wineries, specialty food shops, etc and I started receiving emails about various valentine specials for Feburary. As each email arrived filled with promises of a beautiful meal I deleted them. But then Larkin's arrived with promises of meal inspired by the book/movie 'Like Water for Chocolate'. I hesitated over the delete button...Could a soul food joint do justice to the recipes of one of my favorite books? Would this opportunity ever come up again for a 5 course dinner inspired by the book? And would there be christmas rolls?
So obviously I didn't delete the email and after a week of pondering it, I suggested the idea to Mister Phi. He at first was hesitant but after realizing how many times I had made him watch the film version of 'Like Water for Chocolate' he had no choice.
So I made reservations at Larkin's for their 8:30 seating and put away my pots & recipes for once. The night came and of course Mister Phi was late getting home.
Twenty Minutes past our reservation late and how could I help but me seething mad.
We decided we would attempt going and see what happened. Very lucky for us the first seating had started late because of an accident on the 134. So when we arrived they were only halfway done with seating everyone, and we actually had to wait 10 minutes to be seated.
After a glass of wine, Mister Phi and I were reconciled and ready to begin the courses.
The menu was as following....
-Lobster Cheviche with Chile Oil on savory tart
-Northern style Chorizo & Bean soup
-Chocolate Rose Petal Chicken
-Champagne & Rose Sorbet
-Chocolate Cream Cheese Layer Cake
*Each course was paired with a wine selected from the Colorado Wine Co.
The first course of lobster Ceviche was a lil bland and too much raw onion for my taste. The tart tasted like it was pre-bought. Actually chose to just eat the cheviche out of the tart at the end.
I loved love LOVEDDD the soup course. Very rustic in style and I practically licked the bowl. There wasn't too much beans or too much chorizo, it was perfect. Nicely spicy.
The Chocolate Rose Petal chicken was moist but nothing special. I felt the same way about the mole sauce. It was good but not amazing, mostly forgetable.
The sorbet was a nice refresher but almost felt like an extra dessert. But who am I to question an extra sweet or ever refuse one. Plus I love any kind of homemade sorbet, gelato, ice cream....yums!!
The cake was definitely the grand finale for me. The cake was nice and moist. Not too chocolaty, and not too rich. Matched the sweet cream cheese filling perfectly and I attacked Mr.Phi's after I devoured all of mine.
The wines throughout the meal seemed to match everything nicely and I always enjoy how Larkin's serves wine in small size jam jars. Usually I go to SilverLake Wine so it makes me curious to go visit the Colorado Wine Co.
Overall, the dinner was really good and it was fun going out to dinner for Valentine's Day. I would of loved some christmas rolls! Those on the side would of really made the meal for me! But in the future I will definitely be willing to go to smaller restaurants with a set seating time on holidays. Woot!
No comments:
Post a Comment