Dinner with Barbara

Met Barbara for dinner at one of our favorite places -- a little Italian place called Nonna's.

The view from my seat, waiting for Barbara. This is at 85th and Coluimbus. Neither of us enjoy eating outside, but we got the table by the open front of the restaurant which, to me, is the best of both worlds. It was a very mild night, more like September than June.

I got there first as I allowed way too much time to get there, looked at the menu and saw they had a "special cocktail of the day" and I thought it looked good, but then this stupid internal voice kicks in that I can't have that -- because why? Because I don't normally order that, because it was $10, because I get cheap with myself, blah blah blah.

I think it was the Nun's Story where the student nuns (can't remember what you call them) had to do a self-evaluation, like a confession, and each would begin, "I accuse myself of..." and so I accuse myself of sometimes being too conservative when it comes to spending money, not always, but when it involves something festive -- like this special cocktail of the day.

So I ordered it. It was called Blue Sky... It was Tanqueray gin, aperol (which is an orange liquer), blood orange puree (I'm a sucker for anything made from blood oranges -- shampoo, too!) and orange juice.
Somehow I thought it would be blue, although none of the ingredients are... so it arrived looking like this:

It tasted like the best Screwdriver you could imagine. I could definitely see drinking a bunch of these and getting totally sloshed. It was really refreshing, frosty, citrus-y, icy. Then the server brought the foccacia which was delicious.

When Barbara arrived, we decided to split this salad which was wonderful -- greens with beets and gorgonzola cheese. She had pasta with white clam sauce, with little clams in the shells, and I had papardelle which is wide, flat pasta with veal and mushrooms. We did everything but lick the plates. We also ordered garlic bread -- four thick pieces of foccacia. The server, whom we liked a lot, tried to push the chocolate lava cake for desset, but neither of us were that interested. I like chocolate, but not that much. So we relaxed and finished our drinks.

Here's the view from the inside.

I had a nice driver on the way home, in a Crown Vic cab which looked brand new and I wondered if they were going to be phased out this year why you would put a new one on the road. The driver explained, and this is good news for me, is that a cab can be no more than five years old so the Crown Vic cabs will still be on the streets for five more years -- but, of course, they'll get scarcer.

Got home and sat on my front steps for a while. My neighbor arrived home and we sat and talked until her pizza arrived. I think the delivery guy was surprised to see her sitting there, ostensibly waiting fo him. So a pleasant evening was had by all.