The Anti-Brown Bag

I've been having a bad week, and yesterday was particularly bad, until I thought to call my friend Patrick for lunch. Despite the recession, Bar Americain was packed and could not accommodate us for an hour, but his favorite restaurant, Redeye Grill, had a table available.

I wasn't all that hungry: I mostly needed to be taken care of, and some good company. Ever since reading Taras Grescoe's Bottomfeeders, I've been trying to eat more oysters, but I don't know much about them, so I let Patrick pick. I got 3 each of the Blue Island and Pearl Point oysters. The former were large and salty, and tasted particularly good with a teensy dab of cocktail sauce; the latter were creamy, as if they were covered in a thick white sauce, and were even better with a little lemon.

Patrick's also great at picking wine, so I didn't bother looking at the list. He chose a pinot noir and we had a long discussion of why that would taste good. In a wine tasting class, I learned that proper pinot noir should taste like wet carpet, so I've avoided it since. Patrick pointed out that it tastes good with food and then glared at me when I commented that oysters taste like wet carpet too.

He had diver scallops. I protested loudly that I don't like scallops when he put one on my plate and he laughed when I went from complaining to nom nom-ing.

After the Esca experience, I wanted to get the goat cheese panna cotta, but it wasn't available ala carte. Instead we had white chocolate mousse in a milk chocolate bag, which was rich and sinful and sent me back to work in a cheery if indulgent mood.