Girls’ Night Out

Did you all have a fun Halloween? I can hardly believe that it is November 1st. It is quite warm here in Boston today, and I was grateful for that extra hour of sleep after a very late night out. Normally Sundays kind of bring me down, but not this week. I can not even believe that in a few short days I will be on my way to San Francisco to eat, drink, and meet new people at the Foodbuzz Festival. It seems like we have been waiting for this forever! A 4 day work week means crunching a lot of work in, but the thought of being in wine country this time next week will definitely keep my spirits up! I had a really fun Saturday night. After spending the day cleaning and TRYING to become a self-hosted blogger, I had a little glass of wine and some Trader Joe’s arancini with my friend Raija. The arancini were good, a little bland, but perfect when paired with some spicy tomato sauce.

We each had a glass of Rejadorada, a big, fruit forward Spanish red from one of our Bin Ends wine flea market purchases. I love this wine, it is super dark red with an explosion of flavor of dark berries and cherries. Yum. We had 7:30 reservations at Les Zygomates, and when we arrived it was pretty empty. We were immediately served warm, crust French bread.
 
The birthday girl ordered a bottle of 2006 Château Nuits des Dames, Côtes du Rhône, Southern Rhône, France, and we all toasted to her last year of her twenties, and the official start of our thirtieth birthday yearlong celebration.

I kind of like candlelit photos even if they aren’t super crisp. They’re so warm and cozy looking. The rest of my photos for the dinner came out really blurry, so my descriptions will have to be enough 🙂 We started with the mussels in white wine with dijon mustard, shallots, and tarragon. I absolutely love tarragon, and my favorite part of mussels usually ends up being the bread and sauce part. For my entree, I ordered two appetizers, a frisee salad with a poached egg and bacon vinaigrette and the citrus cure salmon with Yukon gold blini, crème fraiche. I always order this salmon dish because it is absolutely delicious. The potato blini especially, soft, warm potatoe-y heaven. I skipped dessert and instead had a beautiful glass of Moet. After dinner, we walked across the Fort Point bridge and headed over to Barbara Lynch’s Drink, the subterranean creative cocktail hotspot.
 
I love many things about Drink including its more adult crowd, as opposed to the many college-student thronged bars in Boston. They also have an amazing spread of fresh ingredients like herbs, fruits, and spices.

We had a really fun time requesting drinks with different flavor profiles. My favorite of the night was a “bone” which is made of rye whiskey, lime, simple syrup, and tabasco sauce. I had asked for something spicy, and I got it. My mouth was burning, but I love hot food, so why not hot drinks?! We had planned on going to the South End, but an absolute downpour started and we decided to stay at Drink. So many combinations to try, so little time. At a VERY late hour, my wonderful husband picked us up and dropped everyone home safely. He is the best. I spent part of today having lunch with a lovely group of Boston bloggers, and I will be posting about that later today or tomorrow. Stay tuned. . . 🙂 BTW. . . as you know I am obsessed with checking the search terms used to find my blog, and almost ALL of them today were for Trader Joe’s Super Red Drink Powder! It must be very popular!