My Birthday Dinner No. 2 - Italian Eatery

 In my previous post - The Story So Far - I noted that one of the things that happened during 2021 was that I had a birthday. Not just any birthday. I turned 70. 

When I was a kid, my parents (or at least my mother) usually made a big deal about birthdays for me and my siblings. But Mom and Dad never made much of a big deal about their own birthdays. So I suppose it's not surprising that in my adult years, I also never made much to-do about my birthday. While I was still working, I usually would still go to work. My wife and I would have a nice birthday dinner out at a restaurant sometime in the relatively close vicinity of the actual birth date. 

But, 70 is a bigger deal. So it justified having multiple birthday dinners. (Stay tuned for Nos. 3 and 4.)

When I rebooted this blog, after a 14-month hiatus, I decided to give up any pretense that my restaurant posts are actual 'reviews.' Restaurant reviewers have standards and a process for evaluating a restaurant, its ambiance, food, service, value, etc. You won't find that in Krik's Picks. These are just my very personal and subjective experiences, usually about a single visit to a restaurant. 

My birthday dinner No. 2 was in early December at Italian Eatery in South Minneapolis. It was excellent! I mean really delicious, enjoyable, and praiseworthy. 

My wife and I started by sharing a starter - roasted "zucca". It was delicata squash sliced thin and long, roasted with just a bit of char on it. It was topped with sheep's milk cheese, cherries and a pomegranate sauce. 

Pasta meals + wine

From there we went on to our main courses. We both ordered a pasta. The spaghettini nero immediately appealed to my wife. It's squid ink black pasta with scallops, shrimp, squid, and mussels. On the menu, the pasta is served with an arrabbiata sauce, which can be kind of spicy. She doesn't like spicy. But our server offered to check with the chef to see if the dish could be served with a non-spicy sauce. Ecco! Her pasta was served with a pomodoro sauce like they serve on their spaghetti dish. She loved it!

I asked our server for advice on my meal. I couldn't decide between a rigatoni dish with fennel sausage or mushroom cappelletti with a cream sauce. The server suggested the cappelletti but with the fennel sausage added on. I said "OK" and that's what he served. It didn't really need the sausage on the mushroom dish. But it was very tasty. 

As a side dish, we ordered Calabrian cauliflower. The flavors were great, and it was pretty spicy, so my wife didn't eat much of it. We brought about half of it home, and I enjoyed it the next day with my lunch. 

Dessert & amaro

For wine, we ordered by the glass. The restaurant has a nice selection of Italian wine. My wife had a Super Tuscan. I was worried that it would be too heavy with the seafood in her pasta dish. But the server thought it would go well, and she liked it. At the server's suggestion, I ordered a glass of Valpolicella Ripasso Superiore. It's a variety that I've had before, and it complemented my pasta very well.

You're probably picking up a theme here. Our server was really excellent. His attention and advice really helped to make the evening special. But the best was yet to come. 

When I made the reservation, I did note that it was my birthday. So at the end of the meal, the server brought us a generous two-scoops of gelato and for me, an amaro. I topped it all off with an espresso. 

It was such an enjoyable evening, that we decided that we should bring our adult children there. There are many more menu items that deserve to be sampled. (Full disclosure - our daughter is already a fan. She was the one who recommended it in the first place.) 

Post script: Just for the record, my birthday was on Thanksgiving Day. Hence, my No. 1 birthday dinner was Thanksgiving dinner at my sister's house. Here's the photo. 

Thanksgiving/Birthday dinner

The Story So Far

In case you haven't noticed, it's been more than a year since my last post. I considered pulling the plug and just putting an end to Krik's Picks. But I took time to reread some of my old posts, and it reminded me of a couple of things. 

1.  I mostly am writing this for my own amusement. 

2. It's been amusing.

And so - The Story So Far ... *

I started Krik's Picks 15 years ago. My first grandchild had just been born. (Yes, I have a 15-year-old grandchild who's eager to take drivers' ed and get her license.) Also, at the time, I had responsibility for member communications at Land O'Lakes, where I worked until I retired (in 2013). 

At Land O'Lakes, we had cake

(For those who don't know, Land O'Lakes is a farmer-owned cooperative. So my job was to manage the communications to keep the farmers (i.e. co-op members) informed about the company, the industry, and things that affected them as farmers. I felt that we could use a blog and social media to facilitate communications. But, I didn't think that I could manage the newly emerging social media without having any personal experience. So I joined Facebook and started this blog.

(I did not have a lot of support for my ideas about using social media in our member communications program. In fact, the idea was generally pooh-poohed and I was required to include a disclaimer on my blog that "the opinions and positions expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Land O’Lakes." 

(I get some satisfaction that now, of course, Land O'Lakes has a very robust social media presence, including a blog.)

When I started Krik's Picks, I was doing a lot of business travel. That meant that I was constantly eating at new restaurants in the cities where I traveled. That provided me with a steady supply of material to write about. When I retired, I thought I'd have more time for the blog, and I did. But because I wasn't traveling so much, I also had less material to write about. 

Gradually, over time, I was posting less and less leading up to now. It's interesting to note, however, that my two most-read posts have been since I retired. In December 2017, I wrote a post about my Jaguar. (Click here to read it.) It got noticed by an online group of Jaguar owners and I got 605 clicks. But my all-time best read post was in May 2019. I wrote a post about how much I was influenced by my college Marching Band director. (Click here to read it.) It got noticed by an online band parents' website; I got 1763 clicks! 

Just to get you up to speed, here are some things that happened in the last year.

I got vaccinated. I got the Moderna vaccine. The first shot was in February 2021 and the second shot was in March. I got a booster shot in November.

My wife and I started traveling again ... a little bit. In June, we drove to Chicago for a family celebration and stayed in a hotel there. Then, in November, we flew to New York for a family wedding. 

I had a detached retina. As part of the recovery from the surgery to reattach it, I had a gas bubble inserted in my eye, and I had to remain stationary with my left eye angled downward for 50 minutes out of every hour. And I had to maintain that for a full week. 

My dad died in April.

I logged 960 miles on my bicycle during the summer. 

On Thanksgiving Day, I had my 70th birthday. 

* The Story So Far is a transition devise used by Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The Hitchhiker's Guide was a satirical radio series that was broadcast in the late '70s. In those days I did a lot of travel by car for work, and I listened to the series while driving. I thought it was very funny. "The Story So Far" was the opening of the fifth episode of the series. There were 12 episodes in all. The Hitchhiker's Guide was so popular that the creator turned it into a series of books with roughly the same story line. "The Story So Far" was the opening line of the second book in the series. 

Douglas Adams died in 2001. He was my age.

While writing this post, I learned that there was an American punk rock band named The Story So Far. It was formed in 2007. I never heard of it before, and I don't know if it's still in existence.