Fancy Dinner and a Show

So as I mentioned in my last post, dinner was at Nine Thirty at the W hotel. They offered a couple's prix fixe menu with several courses to share. We went with Matt and Kristy and had a lovely time...

Course #1 was appetizers... an oyster on the half shell and caviar with salmon on a little quichey thing. Rick happily had the oyster while I had the caviar. mmmmm
Second course was soup and salad. The salad was incredible... a tomato salad made from the most flavorful tomatoes I had eaten in a LONG time... topped with spinach, roasted pistachios, goat cheese, and a lovely sauce/dressing.

The soup was a corn bisque that was smooth and velvety and amazing (no corn bits in it at all)... with some yummy shrimp in there too! Awesomeness.

After that it was time to cleanse our palates with a lovely lemon-rosemary sorbet. soooo tasty!

Then it was onto our main course. It took a loooong time for it to come out, so the waiter brought us each a glass of champagne for our troubles. Don't mind if I do... One dish was a chipotle rubbed grilled flat iron steak over wild mushroom polenta,
with honey braised carrots and asparagus and veal reduction sauce... incredible, savory!

The other was a basil marinated grilled sturgeon with horseradish roasted potatoes, balsamic glaze, spinach, and tomato. AMAZING!!!

And then it was dessert... vanilla bean panna cotta (kind of flan textured) with a raspberry sauce, organic raspberries on the side, and this little caramel crisp thing that was delightful.

The other dessert was this incredible chocolate cake thing... tiny and perfect, warm and souffle-like and perfectly creamy in the middle, surrounded by a butterscotch sauce and a salty peanut brittle to balance out the perfect sweetness. SIGH.

Absolutely incredible dinner and totally worth the cost. After dinner, Matt and Kristy drove us to the UCLA campus building (just a mile up the hill) where we saw Man of La Mancha. It was opening night and the star who played Don Quixote (and Cervantes) was none other than the dude who played Data on Star Trek... Brent Spiner! He was wonderful and played the role so very well. Our favorite moment was when he sang his "Impossible Dream" song for Dulcinea and the audience wouldn't stop clapping afterward. They couldn't go on to the next line because the clapping went on for so long! It was great. :)

Here (hopefully, if I was able to embed it correctly!) is another version of that scene, from the 57th Tony Awards. I daresay I felt that Brent Spiner played the role even more convincingly...

(if it didn't embed, here is the direct link to the video... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZE4KGB6Wt4 )