Relativity

My brother is funny. He does this thing that I've found to be very typically a male thing -- you love something until you find something better and then suddenly, that thing you loved before suddenly sucks. It's not that you like this new thing better, the other thing totally SUCKS and you like this new thing.

This month it is a new restaurant. He was in love with AB, a little bistro in a nearby town that has very good food. On a food scale of 1 to 10 (1 being unedible and 10 being wonderful) I would give it a 7 or a 7.25 -- with some dishes earning an 8 or 9. And now, he's found a new restaurant in our local town that he likes. He's been bugging me to try it so I met him there tonight. I would give it a 6 for food; a 7.5 for desserts.

But, the whole time we were there he kept asking, "Isn't this WAY better than AB?"  So, finally I said, "No, I don't think so. Desserts are better but the food is way too salty."

I had a beet salad with goat cheese and shaved fennel and it had absolutely no flavor whatsoever. None. I only tasted the sweet of the beets. No flavor of the fennel. The goat cheese tasted like goat cheese but there was a blop about the size of a nickel in the whole salad. Rating: 4

For my entree I had the duck confit which sat on a bed of lentils. Now, given the nature of confit, it can tend to be salty but this was very, very salty and . . . the kiss of death for duck, in my opinion, is that the skin wasn't crispy. Duck is very fatty and if you don't cook it right, it can be greasy. Generally speaking, when the skin is nice and crispy, much of the fat layer is rendered so it makes it yummy, adds flavor to the meat. If you don't, you bite into it and get a mouthful of blubber which is gross. There were parts of the duck that were good and other parts where I got the mouth full of blubber. The lentils didn't have any flavor other than salty. Rating: 5

Fo dessert I had the pear galette and the lemon meringue pie. Yes, two desserts. But, we were all trying each others so it wasn't like the lemon meringue was all eaten by me . . . I had two bites cuz I wanted to try it. So, my brother raved about the pear galette and . . . it was okay. The crust was nice flakey but not much flavor. The filling was an almond paste with pears on top. Again . . . not much flavor. Rating: 5

The lemon meringue was the best thing that I had. The lemon portion of the pie was outstanding. Not too sweet; not too tart; and had a very fresh, bright lemon flavor. Very good. The meringue was good as well but the ratio of meringue to filling was a little high on the meringue side but that was easily rectified by just not eating as much of the meringue.  Rating: 8.5

The main reason AB now sucks and the new restaurant is better, to my brother, is because his girlfriend likes the bread pudding at the new place better. She used to love the bread pudding at AB but they changed it -- added an orange slant to it -- and she didn't like it. I like his girlfriend but, as previously mentioned, I'm not in love with her like he is so I find things like this annoying where he finds them "cute".

So, they're trying to get me to go back there tomorrow but, I don't wanna. If I'm going to spend that kind of money (my portion of tonight's dinner was $110 with tip, etc.) I'd rather go to AB.