On this day, 32 years ago, my wonderful husband was born into this world. Now that I am a mother myself, I sometimes think that birthdays should actually be a celebration of the mother, for gestating the baby for 9 months in her womb, birthing her baby through labor, pain, and stretching, and then nurturing that baby through middle of the night feedings, dirty diapers, and many, many tears. But enough of my self-absorbed musings. Although Brandon's mom, Susan, does deserve kudos for the wonderful man that is Brandon.
To celebrate Brandon's birthday, I made reservations for a new restaurant in SLC called Pago. Our partners in crime these days, Emily and Jared, accompanied us. The food was absolutely delicious and the dining experience was fabulous - good service, nice setting and ambiance. I just hope that Brandon liked it as much as I did. I wish that I brought my camera to take pictures of the place and the food because I'm sure that my descriptions won't do it justice but sadly, I left my camera in Japan. But I feel like the names of the dishes alone are enough to make your salivate just a little.
We started off with appetizers of Cinnamon Beets and Braised Beef Cheeks on Polenta, both of which I loved (and I'm not a huge polenta fan). For entrees, Brandon ordered the Wagyu Bavette Steak, I got the Roasted Pheasant with Quinoa, Emily had the Chicken Paillard, and Jared got the Curried Gnocchi with Braised Morgan Valley Lamb. I tried a bite of all of them and Emily's chicken was my favorite, which she also enjoyed (and I was so glad that my pregnant sister was finally getting some protein she liked to her little fetus). I ranked mine second even though the other dishes were truly delectable (Jared's was just really spicy, but good and Brandon's beef was classic goodness). Dessert consisted of Amano Chocolate Mousse and Passionfruit Mousse while Emily and Jared shared the Peach Buckle (which I feel like I ate the majority of).
The reason why I chose Pago is because it practices RSA which stands for Restaurant Supported Agriculture so all the dishes there use local ingredients from local farms and ranchers (similar to a CSA but for restaurants). So it was nice to know that our meal didn't travel too far. And for those of you who are not familiar with Amano chocolate, it is made locally here in Utah and has won all sorts of international awards and is absolutely delicious (yeah, who knew?). And Brandon is all about sustainability, supporting local business, and the environment so I thought it was fitting for us and our values. But even if you don't care about those things, I would still highly recommend this restaurant.
I'm pretty horrible about celebrating birthdays because they aren't a big deal in my family. But Brandon's mom is really thoughtful about it so Brandon bought a nice new 23 inch computer monitor with the Best Buy giftcards she sent him (to go with his new MacPro computer). Brandon bought himself a comic book as a gift from me, called Blankets, which we had previously borrowed from his brother, Cameron, but we both read and enjoyed it so much, we thought it would be nice to add to our library.
What I am pretty decent at is coordinating an event such as a restaurant outing. In addition to this outing, in a couple weeks when Brandon's parents come into town, we'll do a family birthday dinner then. And I may even be so ambitious as to make the legendary chocolate roll for dessert...more to come on that in a couple of weeks.
3 comments:
That is so funny that you left your camera in Japan! You and Elaine and cut from the same cloth. Are you guys going for the world record for lost cameras?
"are" cut from the same cloth....my bad.
I have the feeling that one of the million kids at Aunt Yoko's house might have taken it out of my diaper bag that was sitting open on the floor because I saw the exact same camera as mine sitting on Aunt Yoko's piano when we left, not realizing it was mine because I never took it out. But yeah, I could have been more vigilant. At least it wasn't our passports!
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