Extra Virgin

Last night, to celebrate Joy's last day of peds surgery and to celebrate my... ongoing wonderfulness of fourth year, we went to newly opened Extra Virgin. What a nice find, beyond just the awesome name. It has relatively cheap Italian dishes that are savory. We started out with a loooong wait at the bar, while sipping Bellinis, which by the way, may be my new favorite drink. (But maybe it's really tied with a good cosmo) When we were finally seated, we had a friendly funny and good looking waiter who had charm and great menu suggestions. We shared the mushroom and goat cheese bruschetta which was really quite heavy on the mushrooms, in a good way, and not as much goat cheese, which I found slightly disappointing, but overall, it was tasty. Joy had the duck confit over risotto and I had the lasagne but only after finding out that the Maine lobster canelloni was sold out for the night. This is a major pet peeve of mine... when restaurants "sell out" of an item on their menu!! That's just wrong. I hate having made a decision and then having to make another one, on the fly, under pressure. Plus it always makes me want what I can't have, that much more, which is frustrating. and I don't want my dining experience to be frustrating. But this is where our waiter's charm came in handy and he made me feel good about my lasagne, which turned out to be REALLY good. It had lots of eggplant and thin layers of ricotta and sliced tomatoes. Yum. I would say it was one of the best lasagne dishes I have ordered. So, the food took like over an hour to come out; people who came after us were done eating and on their way out, by the time our food came... so the Host and our waiter graciously offered desserts on the house. We were stuffed full but how could we resist? I had the apple tarte, which not only threatened to fall apart on me, but did, and Joy had the flourless chocolate tarte, which was way rich. The desserts were good but not as fantastic as our meals. Or maybe it was because we were way too full. Anyway, it was overall, a fun relaxing night.

Before we arrived at Extra Virgin, however, (I'm telling this story backwards) we tried to go to Carnivale. We were pleasantly surprised that the valet cost only $5 but then when we got inside and found out about the TWO HOUR wait for dinner, (it was 9pm) we weren't that excited. But the valet guys were jerks and still made us pay for parking our car for literally 3 minutes. BOO. So, it seems like Carnivale might be a little overrated but I still want to check it out and see what all the hype is about. Who waits for 2 hours and has dinner at 11pm?!? Crazy people, that's who.