Last night for DAT

On the last night for DAT, we went to Circa (2001 Chestnut at Fillmore). This was probably actually one of my favorites of the DAT menu, food-wise. The restaurant itself was a little odd - half of it was devoted to a bar area where apparently some dating service was in effect - there was a looping slideshow of beautiful people at I guess past such parties, someone with a huge video camera, a photographer going around and taking photos... The other half, though, was a nice restaurant with a simple, clean design and relatively quiet, given that it was right next to this busy bar. I enjoyed the food though. For the DAT menu, the entrees offered were 5 of the 7 entrees on the regular menu (minus a Sea Bass and one other seafood dish), which was nice. The entire dessert menu was available for us to choose from. The only real limitation is that Circa had quite a lot of starters and "quick bites" that looked interesting, but for our first course, we could only choose between two salads and the tomato soup with grilled cheese bites. Too bad, since some of the other appetizers looked good. We both got the tomato soup for our first course - it was quite yummy but a little too spicy for my taste. The grilled cheese bites I kind of enjoyed - the cheese was a little strong but the bread was grilled perfectly. I was actually filling up a bit on this appetizer, so I stopped eating before I was done to leave room. My entree was the grilled salmon on some kind of chanterelle mushroom/white corn/spinach? succotash with a tomato-something puree. This was quite yummy. I enjoyed the succotash a lot (I love all those flavors) and it complemented the salmon (which was cooked tender and flaky) really well. This is probably the entree I found best-flavored and most interesting of the various DAT entrees I've tried. Not too strong, not too bland. My bf got the painted hills flat iron steak with chive-horseradish mashed potatoes and garlic-spinach. He was a bit disappointed because his steak was burnt on the outside. It was right on the inside - he asked for it medium - but it was probably cooked on too high of a flame or something, b/c the outside was a bit charred, and neither of us like the burnt taste. He said later he should have scraped the burnt part off and he probably would have liked it fine. He found the mashed potatoes interesting because of that hint of horseradish and ate more of it than he probably usually would have, given his general lack of interest in potatoes. I had to leave part of my entree behind too, or there was no way I'd be able to eat dessert. For dessert, my bf got the chocolate lava cake, which had a peanut butter filling and homemade peanut butter ice cream on the side. I tried to order the apple pie creme brulee, which sounded really interesting, but they were out, so I got the brioche donut holes with cinnamon sugar on the outside, and chocolate and maple creme anglaise dipping sauces. His lava cake - especially when it first came out - was quite yummy. I love peanut butter/chocolate almost as much as I love hazelnut/chocolate or mint/chocolate, so that was delicious to me. I liked the ice cream better than him (he's not as much of a PB fan) so he donated the scoop to me. I got five brioche donut holes, well coated in cinnamon sugar, but was very sad when in my infinite clumsiness, I went to try to eat one after dipping it in the maple creme anglaise, but having had it sitting on top of my fork, it went flying, managing to bounce off my hair, my shirt, and my jeans before hitting the ground, leaving a trail of cinnamon sugar and creme anglaise behind. Sigh. I was sadder for losing one of my five donot holes than for getting myself so messy. The rest of it was good, though. I found the actual donut holes much more interesting than what we had gotten at Sauce the previous week - better taste and consistency - and I love maple, so the maple creme anglaise was a wonderful dipping sauce. The chocolate was all right too, but I basically scooped up as much of the creme anglaise as I could so that was definitely the highlight for me. Happiness.

Overall, while I think my dining experience was a little better than my bf's (b/c of his burnt steak), I was very happy with Circa's food. Service was good, too. Everything was quite prompt and attentive, and we were out of there with an hour and 15 minutes, which always makes me happy. As my bf said - we're not diners. We don't really enjoy lounging around in a restaurant for hours and hours.

So that's about it for DAT 2008. Must eat much less and work out more - I think I gained a couple lbs over the last couple weeks!