A shot I can handle

I had an appointment in Benicia this afternoon, so I met up with M (of M & R), M’s brother K, and Jim for lunch at Schezuan house, a run of the mill scat cheap Chinese food place. I had a mixed veggie special with white rice and an egg roll. Jim ate my soup. Nothing left to say about that except the company was awesome. That’s what made the trip worthwhile. M (and R) have disappeared into domestic bliss, so we don’t see them too often. I have to enjoy what I get these days. However, R called me yesterday, and apparently she won some sort of special spa thing at Nordstrom and we are scheduled for a girl’s day on the 26th. Very, very exciting.

I booked us dinner reservations through Open Table earlier in the week for Va de Vi, a tapas restaurant in Walnut Creek. The restaurant was jam packed even at 8:30 pm. The place is tiny, so it seemed even more crowded. Noise level pretty high, but we were also seated right by the door, which may have affected it somewhat. Good thing the plates were small, because the table size was about that of a fast food restaurant table for two. Anyway, tapas really isn’t a good idea with Jim’s appetite, but I fell in love with them after we tried Hidden in Santa Monica, so I wanted another go around. Our waiter recommended that we start with two to three choices and then go from there. Naturally Jim ordered more.

We each started off with a shot of soup, Jim’s crab bisque at $4 and my chestnut butternut squash at $3. After the first taste, Jim wanted an entire bowl, and I wouldn’t have minded a cup of mine. I was shocked at how quickly they got the food out on the table. It was a little odd drinking soup from a shot glass; however, since this is probably the only shot I can handle, I went with it. Next up was the chile relleno. I have to admit that I am spoiled after trying Bobby Flay’s chile relleno at Mesa Grill in Las Vegas, so this one definitely came up short. It was stuffed with mushrooms and manchego cheese, which was very yummy, and the accompanying paprika cream sauce was also very good. The breading and deep frying were just ordinary though, and took away from the overall dish. I don’t know how Bobby makes his, but they are so light and crispy. This one was a lot heavier and greasy. I liked it. I just didn’t love it. Jim was neutral.

Next out was the crab potpie, which was topped with puff pastry and so beautiful. Jim really enjoyed that. The butternut squash tortellini came out thereafter. It was in a typical brown butter sage sauce, and Jim loved it. Of course, what’s not to love about a dish drenched in butter? I liked it, but wasn’t crazy about the curry essence in the filling. Too odd for Italian food in my opinion. I didn’t dislike it or anything like that. It was definitely very good.

Finally our gnocchi came out and I was in heaven. They got the texture of the gnocchi right and they were these soft little pillows of delight. So utterly delicious. They flavored the gnocchi with garlic and onion and the sauce was mushroom-based with truffle essence. I don’t remember the type of mushroom, but I’ve never had it (or even heard of it for that matter) before, and they were kind of like a cross between shiitake and straw. Definitely the texture of straw, but more of a shiitake flavor. Either way, they were delicious, albeit a little salty.

Jim decided to order two more plates—pomme frites and duck meatballs. The fancy French fries were light and crispy, despite being drenched in oil. It was nothing extra napkins and blotting couldn’t take care of. They were basically ballpark garlic fries flavoring on shoestring potatoes. I was very pleasantly surprised. Jim’s duck meatballs weren’t well received. He didn’t like the spice. They were pretty, in my opinion, breaded and fried and topped with a chiffonade of some green herb.

For dessert, we got an apple cranberry tart and profiteroles. The tart was insanely good. It came in phyllo dough and the cranberries weren’t at all tart and in fact balanced out the sweetness of the apple. Coupled with the vanilla bean gelato, it was delicious. Then we hit the profiteroles, which we chose to stuff with vanilla bean gelato instead of pastry cream, which was a good call, because again, amazingly delicious. In fact, just as good as the ones we had at Hidden, and this time we got three large ones instead of two small ones. It’s official: I’m going to have to try making them myself.

We didn’t like the over $100 bill, but it was a very good evening. I thought it was a very creative touch to bring the bill in a book. People wrote all over the insides, so we left our mark by writing movie quotes over dozens of pages. I don’t think we’ve ever spent 2 hours in a restaurant, but that’s what happened tonight.