Happy '06 everyone, just thought I'd describe the great food and drink my girl and I had on New Year's Eve, it ended up being a really good one without much planning...
We woke up to a pretty rainy day and decided to get things started early by going to Swan Oyster Depot in SF. For those who don't know it, it is a classic seafood bar from the old school. We got there just before 11 am - hey, I said we were starting early.
They were almost completely out of crab, but we managed to sweet talk our way into a couple of crab cocktails, along with a couple of lobster cocktails, prawn cocktails, and 2 dozen oysters, and a bottle of Honig sauvignon blanc.
While we ate, we kept seeing the servers carefully weighing out 1 and 2 ounce jars of Tzar Nicolai american osetra caviar. I decided to splurge, and when my girl ran out to feed our meter, I had them make a big production out of weighing out a 2 ounce jar for us (for later) but didn't tell her. So she was very excited when, after being very dramatic about the whole thing, the server handed her the jar. We brought it home along with more prawns and a pound of house-smoked salmon.
Knowing that it was shaping up to be a long night, I went for a short ride after we got home. Just enough to get the blood flowing.
Then at about 4pm we popped the first cork: Schramsberg blanc de noirs. Delicious. We drank it while eating the caviar, prawns, and some of the salmon. We ate the caviar straight - if you like caviar but feel guilty about the Caspian stuff (and you should) give this a try, it was terrific. The salmon went on thin toast points with a little creme fraiche and a cucumber/red onion pickle-type thing I improvished that ended up being really good.
A little later some friends came over, which was not planned. We popped more corks, three or four total, more Schrambsberg and two bottles of french stuff, but I can't remember the label. Our friends also got to sample some of the salmon creation. We sat around, sipped, nibbled, and sampled some herbal delights.
At around 8:30 or so we walked to a neighborhood bar/restaurant where my final meal of '05 was one of the best restaurant steaks ever, a perfectly grilled ribeye. Washed that down with an Anderson Valley Zinfandel, had a cup of coffee, then rang in the new year with McCallen 18...whew!
We woke up to a pretty rainy day and decided to get things started early by going to Swan Oyster Depot in SF. For those who don't know it, it is a classic seafood bar from the old school. We got there just before 11 am - hey, I said we were starting early.
They were almost completely out of crab, but we managed to sweet talk our way into a couple of crab cocktails, along with a couple of lobster cocktails, prawn cocktails, and 2 dozen oysters, and a bottle of Honig sauvignon blanc.While we ate, we kept seeing the servers carefully weighing out 1 and 2 ounce jars of Tzar Nicolai american osetra caviar. I decided to splurge, and when my girl ran out to feed our meter, I had them make a big production out of weighing out a 2 ounce jar for us (for later) but didn't tell her. So she was very excited when, after being very dramatic about the whole thing, the server handed her the jar. We brought it home along with more prawns and a pound of house-smoked salmon.
Knowing that it was shaping up to be a long night, I went for a short ride after we got home. Just enough to get the blood flowing.
Then at about 4pm we popped the first cork: Schramsberg blanc de noirs. Delicious. We drank it while eating the caviar, prawns, and some of the salmon. We ate the caviar straight - if you like caviar but feel guilty about the Caspian stuff (and you should) give this a try, it was terrific. The salmon went on thin toast points with a little creme fraiche and a cucumber/red onion pickle-type thing I improvished that ended up being really good.
A little later some friends came over, which was not planned. We popped more corks, three or four total, more Schrambsberg and two bottles of french stuff, but I can't remember the label. Our friends also got to sample some of the salmon creation. We sat around, sipped, nibbled, and sampled some herbal delights.
At around 8:30 or so we walked to a neighborhood bar/restaurant where my final meal of '05 was one of the best restaurant steaks ever, a perfectly grilled ribeye. Washed that down with an Anderson Valley Zinfandel, had a cup of coffee, then rang in the new year with McCallen 18...whew!