Dinner at Zuni Cafe

It was our anniversary yesterday, and to celebrate, we went to our favorite restaurant in the whole city, Zuni Cafe.

Of course we don't ever need an actual, as it were, excuse to visit the Zuni Cafe because goshdarn it, this place is so good, you could go any night, hang out in the bar, order a PILE of shoestring fries or a plate of oysters and let the whole day just roll off your back.

We speak from experience.

But for this little jaunt, Eric actually called ahead -- which, oddly enough, we hardly ever do for any restaurant -- and we got a fabulous little table that overlooked the kitchen and the famous wood burning oven.

As we snuck photos as furtively as is possible with a flash, our server came by.

"It's um... for our food blog..."

Yeah. Anyhow. We started with a margarita apiece and Eric ordered a nice assortment of oysters -- you'll have to check his food blog to see which they were.


All I know is they didn't have little clean and neat shoes.






For my part I thought about ordering the fantastic polenta, which is a favorite of mine, but instead settled on the famous Caesar salad.




The server asked me if I minded if it had anchovies and an egg and ... Stop right there. I mind nothing.





For his main course, Eric had what they called "mock Porchetta," Apparently a real porchetta is a whole stuffed pig. If it tasted as good as this herbed version though, bring it on....


My main was the spaghetti. Of course, it wasn't just any spaghetti, it was whole wheat (and not gritty whole wheat) spaghetti with house-cured bacon, tomatoes and 30-year old balsamic vinegar. Guess which part of that title caught my attention.

For dessert, we had a frangipane something or other with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was already focussed on the cheese course.

Zuni's cheese courses are almost always composed cheese plates and the pairings are almost always delightful. Last night we got the Abbaye de Belloc, a lovely sheep's milk cheese, with a conserve of green figs.

Out of my way, I'm coming through with a fork!