a moment for foodies

This is entry is entirely devoted to tonight's amazing dinner experience.

Ahem:

Kim, a fellow South Seattle student, lives on the same block as a really adorable restaurant. It has several wide doors that open all the way up onto the street, a second floor with an iron railing and charming stone walls. We walk by it all the time and always say to each other, "let's eat there some day soon." A few weeks ago we got our internship placements and lo and behold... that was Kim's. "Now," I said, "we are going For Sure and you are getting us the hookups." And let me tell you, hookups are the way to go.

Since Monday's are Kim's night off and this is the last one of our our internships, this seemed like a fitting evening. So tonight, 6 of us from South accompanied Kim to her delightful little Osteria. The servers greeted her with obvious warmth and recognition and treated us the same. Our server turned out to be a character on every level. Sporting the only legit Italian afro I've ever seen, as well as a gaudy red and black apron with dancing people all over it and white framed goggle like glasses, he really didn't fit in with the surroundings at all, but couldn't have been more hilarious and great.

And now I'm going to straight up describe everything we ate because it was so wonderful.
For an appetizer afroman said, "I bring you an assortment" and brought us a platter of several Italian meats, toast with pate , bruschetta, and a delicious and olive oily flat bread. We asked for a recommendation on wine and they brought us a wonderful medium dry, slightly flowery white wine which was of course amazing. Our entrees were displayed beautifully, mine being marinated chicken with grilled assorted vegetables. Others included, thinly sliced pork in fig sauce (so. so good.), potato ravioli and beef in a some sort of magical sage sauce. And let's not forget a Bisteque Florentine- a dish famous in Florence, these steaks are cut literally 4 fingers thick, lightly grilled on each side, and taken off the grill when the middle is still dark red and bleeding. This is something I would normally never lay a hand on but being such a quintessential dish I ended up actually ordering it once before and it's really rather unbelievable. When we finished our deliciousness, and they asked if we wanted dessert, we respectfully declined and they respectfully filled our glasses with a dessert wine instead. When That was finished we asked for the check and he nodded, left the room, and came back with two Giant (and I mean giant) pastries which turned out to be some sort of chewy flat bread folded like a calzone and filled with Nutella and cream. As I gathered the buttons from my exploded pants we finally actually got the check. This- I might add- was not a cheap restaurant and for the amount of food we each consumed, we each should have owed at least 40 euro (euro mind you, not dollars) but in fact, we each owed only 25. Hookups. They're simply the way to go.

I had to quite literally drag myself home and was almost bummed to see the horse and carriage guys by the Duomo had turned in for the night or I just might have hailed one. If one of those guys down by the water front in Seattle on the rickshaw bikes had been around I definitely would have taken him up.

Now the food coma sets in.