Wednesday Weekend Wind-Up: Boca

It was my one-year anniversary at the hospital last weekend, so with little prompting, my husband made reservations for us at Boca. This restaurant has been on my list to try for eons. Boasting "culinary curiosity in modern decadence", this restaurant really lived up to its claims for us.  Unfortunately, I was starting to feel not so well, but I was still excited to walk in this big red door.

The decor was very nice, kind of upscale rustic modern. The interior was definitely larger than expected, and the open kitchen area fills the room with the aroma of various foods punctuated by "yes chef!" - it was interesting to see a real kitchen in action. We started with cocktails - Radiant Pear for me and Age of Autumn for Francisco.

The menu isn't terribly expansive, but I think that's a sign that what they do, they do well.

Francisco went upstairs to use the bathroom shortly after we ordered. I gestured to him to take pictures, but he apparently took this to mean 'take pictures of the hand towels in the bathroom'. Not even a picture of the hallway of individual private restrooms. He did get one pic of the chandelier.

And one pic looking down at me in the main dining room.

We ordered a side of the Blue Oven Bad Boy Bread, which Francisco claimed was the best bread he had ever tasted. We each got a tasting portion of pasta for our entrees. Francisco had the Onion & Almond Cappellacci [top pic below], and I had the Gnocchi con Fonduta [bottom pic].  Francisco described his dish as being delectable, with a wonderful depth of flavor based around the soft pasta with crunchy almonds and crisp broccolini. His was good, but I was partial to the melt-in-your-mouth gnocchi - it was like eating little pillows of truffled potato dumplings.

We put in half of our dessert order early since it took a little while to prepare. Francisco had the chocolate souffle, which he said was his least favorite of all the food and it was still stupendous. I had the Maple-Apple Cheesecake, which I absolutely loved and I only wish the serving size had been larger.

It was a beautiful, delicious meal.

Saturday morning, we headed south for another episode of Coffeenati [should this be a thing? I haven't decided yet.] This time we went to Left Bank Coffeehouse. I had a Pumpkin Pie Latte and Francisco had an Orange-Spice Mocha. I really enjoyed the coffee here - it was flavorful and not bitter at all.

We also had a Pecan Pie roll.

So, Francisco wanted to go to the mall to do some Christmas shopping for me. I left him at Macy's and wandered around a bit. I didn't actually buy anything this time around, but I did take a few notes. We started having our 'where should we go have lunch conversation', and ultimately decided on Olive Garden. I'm not sure why since I'm not really the biggest fan of them. It was kind of a lackluster meal, and I was holding out for the saving grace of Pumpkin Cheesecake...but it was half-frozen.

Francisco has been working on a project at home for a while, so he returned to that for the evening while I did some cleaning around the house.

Obviously, Colby loves lounging by the fireplace on these chilly fall mornings. We were mostly caught up with things on Sunday, so that meant we got to do some lounging and eat some junk food from Penn Station and Potbelly. :-P