celebratory date night

I love having things to celebrate, don't you? Actually, scratch that, I love to celebrate!! Sometimes Tim and I just pull some random fact out of a hat and poof! instant date night. "It's tuesday, let's celebrate!" "We've been so good about not eating out this week; let's celebrate!!!!!"

This week, though, we were celebrating not only the grand opening of my storefront but also some pretty big sales. {Thanks so much for the support!} Plus, Tim had heard that one of our favorite "special occasion" restaurants was having an anniversary celebration and had discounted one of their items all week, how could we resist that!?

So, to commemorate my first sales, we each got a five-course meal.

Yeah, talk about overkill, right?

Here's the thing about this place though, you guys. It's tied for best restaurant in Santa Barbara (in our book, anyway) and even though we'd only been twice before, we hadn't yet been disappointed. Yes, 5 courses was a TON of food, but it was discounted so much that we essentially paid for the three-course-meal and got two extra courses for five bucks. Plus they're one of those "local and organic" places that has a different menu every day and will order entire animals so they can do their butchering right there and have the freshest meat evarrrrrrrrrrr.

We sat at the bar overlooking their kitchen (so we could scope out the best dishes to order, duhhh), and they got a few awesome deliveries for the next day: a bucket of urchin and giant seabass!!

  

The other cool thing is that the owner/head chef is, like, barely older than we are. Go what's-his-face!

So anyway, I can't go any further without showing you the 5 dishes Tim and I each had. (I say "each" loosely; because if I'm being honest we split everything. We tried the whole menu haha!). We love this place because even the grossest-sounding dishes are absolutely delicious. But don't take my word for it, take a look! 

"Tim" had (counter-clockwise from Left): Beef cheeks with gnocci and succotash, goat (!) bandito with potato quesadilla and pico, jerk sea bass with shelling beans, argula salad with stone fruit, and sweetbreads with ravioli and a sherry cream sauce.

"I" had: (counter-clockwise from Left): seared hamachi in cucumber soup with summer melon and dill pollen, ramen with smoked pork and kimchee, pork tenderloin with brussels sprouts and baby romas on cream of wheat, seared scallops with celery root puree and citrus fruit, and a duck duo (seared breast and sausage) on lentils with plum sauce.

Yeah we had to take like a ton of it home. I couldn't even eat my last course. What were we thinking??

Oh yeah, that's right; an awesome foodie date night. How could I have forgotten?

Don't forget to enter the store giveaway ! Win one of my sweetheart hangers!!  The giveaway ends TOMORROW at noon PST, so head over to this post and enter now!