So...What's the most you've ever spent on a meal (for two)?

About $800 for 2 at the French Laundry (included corkage for 2 bottles of wine, and a couple of dessert wines and tip) and about the same at Tetsuya in Sydney. Except that in for Tetsuya we did the wine pairings.

But the worst pricey meal was when DH and I recently spent over $500 at Saison in SF for 2 tasting menus + 1.5 wine pairings + 1 bottle corkage. So not worth it...:(

Personally, I'd rather eat at Cyrus or Gary Danko - spend less and enjoy it far far more.

arancello in Not About Food

Truffle events/ dinners in the bay area?

Turns out Delfina is doing Truffle Dinners this week - the menu looks fabulous! I will report back.

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Delfina Restaurant
3621 18th St, San Francisco, CA 94110

arancello in San Francisco Bay Area

Truffle events/ dinners in the bay area?

Are any of you considering any of the truffle events/ dinners in the bay area? Just got the email from Oliveto's Bob Klein and was reminded of their upcoming truffle dinners. My last two experiences at Oliveto (one for their tomato dinner) were fair at best (and pretty bad QPR I felt) so I'm not sure that I would go back there for a truffle dinner.

Any other recs for a truffle dinner or menus serving truffles? They seem to cropping up on a lot of menus at this time of the year - would love to hear about any that might be considered a "good value". Thanks so much!

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Oliveto Cafe
5655 College Ave., Oakland, CA 94618

arancello in San Francisco Bay Area

Bar Charlie - "Date Night" april special?

sounds lovely! I wish I had known about this but I don't remember seeing this on the Bar Charlie site when I was finalizing dinner plans last week for this past week.

arancello in Southwest

Las Vegas Trip Report- Sushi Roku,LOS, L'Atelier

Just back from a weekend in Las Vegas, and here's a report back on the meals we had - all but one based on the recs from this board.

First Night at L'Atelier - DH had the 9 course Discovery menu ($148) and I had the 5 course Tasting Menu ($75), and we shared everything. Overall I felt that the $75 is a much better value, most likely because the most memorable dishes were part of it: the langoustine fritter with basil, the pork belly main dish and the selection of tarts. The cheese course was pretty nice too, though the Brillat Savarin was a tad too cold and chalky.

From the discovery menu, we liked the fois gras ravioli in herbed chicken broth, though a smaller quantity of herbs, or a herb scented broth with no herbs in the broth would have been my preference.The signature quail dish was also pretty nice, but the quail was slightly dry.
We washed down our meal with a 2005 Rochioli RRV pinot that we had brought with us, and a half bottle of Duval-leroy Rose served in nice Spigelau glassware. Service was excellent throughout the meal, and the total damage of $391 (incl. tip) was a decent value for LV IMHO.
As expected, getting a reservation was easy for a friday night, but there were a good # of ppl at the restaurant, making for a very nice experience overall.

Since we were curious about the LV buffets, we tried the one at the Bellagio for brunch and it seemed a pretty good deal for around $25 pp. The food quality was surprisingly good for a buffet. We particularly enjoyed the various kinds of bass and Singapore noodles from the Asian station, the prime rib, the roast lamb, and the grilled tenderloin. The highlight was the banana and hazelnut chocolate french toast and I am not even a french toast fan! The desserts were reminiscent of a college cafeteria in their taste and presentation, but the variety was mind boggling. Since we were willing to sit at the bar, the wait in line was cut short, and the wait staff at the bar was extremely pleasant and friendly.

After watching O, we rushed off to Lotus of Siam for our 2nd dinner (about a $18 dollar cab ride) and made it there just under their 9:45 deadline for seating. We ordered 4 dishes from the Northern Thai menu and of these two were incredible - the sausage and the mushroom dip (which was very hot for us, and we tend to eat a lot of really hot food at home!) . The green jackfruit curry w/ pork and the noodles with vegetable and pork blood were unusual and interesting and pretty tasty too, but we did not love them as much as the first 2 dishes. We had brought our own wine, and it was served to us in very nice Riedel stems, and service was efficient and friendly. They encouraged us to take our leftover wine, so we had the singular pleasure of drinking an off-dry sparkling wine out of a styrofoam soup cup as waited outside for our cab. This meal cost us only $70 including tip and corkage, and the time and $ spent on the cab ride was well worth it.

Our 3rd dinner was at Sushi Roku, and it was the most disappointing meal of the trip - detailed report coming shortly.

arancello in Las Vegas

Pittsburgh: Dish Osteria

Thank you Burgh foodies -- thanks to your recommendation we had a great meal at Dish last night! I am a frequent lurker but infrequent poster on this board, but Dish was certainly good enough for me to come back and report on it. We live in the SF Bay area but travel to Pgh several times a year and this is the best meal we've had in town for a while. We had been very disappointed with Eleven and Kaya in our last 2 visits

My husband and I had reservations at Dish for 8:15, but got there 10 minutes late due to parking snafus. Our table still wasn't ready by 8:35, and we were finally seated around 9pm. Initially the host, Andrea was a bit cold, but the bartender was great from the beginning! She got us menus, wine, bread and even our first appetizer at the bar really quickly, and offered tastes of several wines to help with our wine decisions. Eventually even Andrea warmed up to us and apologized profusely for the delay with our table. We chatted a bit about his travels, and the sources for his ingredients (the excellent braseola is from Italy and the super fresh scallops are sourced from Maine/ Mass. coast)

We started at the bar with the braseola mentioned above. It was really good, drizzled with Olive Oil and a lemon juice and served with large shards of parmesan (The parm was initially too cold but it was good once it had attained room temp) -- nice classic match that went well with our glass of Tuscan Barbera. It also had some chilled asparagus with it - I did not care too much for that particular combo, so had the veggie separately, drizzled with some Evoo.

2nd course: Grilled Calamari with spinach, and mussels - both very well done and went down nicely with the prosecco. The Prosecco was too cold to start, but got better once it warmed up. We tried a sicilan white too, but it too surprisingly too sweet/ short on acidity, and the varietal was not a familiar one for me.

We were getting pretty full so we had a couple more starters for our mains: A pretty decent beef carpaccio with the usual add-ons - parm shards, evoo, lemon juice, pepper. It was very light on the lemon and did not interfere with the barbera we had with it, and a really beautifully seared and seasoned scallop appetizer drizzled with truffle oil. It also came with a tomato-olive slaw which wasn't really necessary and but served the function of filling out the plate and added some color to it.

We finished with a limoncello cheesecake (tasted mostly of ricotta with a mellow lemon flavor) and a very dense chocolate breadpudding. Both desserts were perfectlly respectable but the promised grand marnier in the bread pudding and limoncello in the cheesecake could not be tasted and had most likely dissipated during baking. The waiter had considerable trouble locating some caffienated black tea for us -- his only mis-step the whole evening, as the service until then had been casual and friendly as well as attentive and helpful. But the complimentary glasses of moscato certainly helped end the night on a sweet note. Our final verdict - nice dinner in a romantic setting at a pretty good price ($114 without tip for 5 good sized apps, 5 glasses of wine (not counting the moscato), 2 desserts, 2 teas) -- we would definitely consider returning.

arancello in Pennsylvania