Birthday

Well, my birthday went well, if not quite as initially planned - we had aimed to go to Acadia, a cajun restaurant much recommended, but it turned out they were closed for a private party on the 12th. I tried looking for other cajun restaurants, but all the other listings looked, well, dubious - more on the line of cajun restaurant and budweiser refueling station - except for one, which, despite being listed as cajun, was (on inspection of the menu) just a seafood restaurant, and not a particularly inspiring one at that.

I also tried ransacking looking for a good proprietorial (i.e. not a chain) Italian or French place, without any joy - the few possibilities turned out to be either pretty lowrent, or too far out of town. So, we wound up going to a 'French' style chain restaurant, and were pleasantly surprised.

Not that any Parisian would have recognised it as French, except for the decor - the waiters were neither surly nor superior, the service was in fact excellent, and the food was hot and timely: and the menu almost completely lacked typical french fare & heavy cream sauces, something that didnt disappoint.

We started with the recommended specialty appetiser, pork pot-stickers. I'm not sure what we expected, but it certainly wasn't what we got - parcels of minced pork wrapped in a thin pastry and (I think) steamed then lightly fried. For all the unexpectedness, quite tasty. For a main, I had planned to stick to a steak, figuring that would be the one option on the menu that any chain restaurant would do well.

In fact, to my astonishment, they had orange roughy on the menu - a delicacy I haven't had since we left NZ - so I ordered that, and was utterly delighted: panfried with a simple citrus sauce on the side, it was perfectly cooked and completely delicious. Cat had chicken cordon bleu, which she was very satisfied with, altho the quantity was such that she couldn't finish it (not a problem I experienced with the fish, I hasten to say!

We were so well fed at this point, that desert seemed superfluous, so we decamped home to coffee and some of the excellent fruit cake Cat had baked as my birthday cake.