Too Much Goodness for One Meal

Tuesday afternoon, 3:43pm.  Laying in the sun in the Panhandle, sipping a fountain Diet Coke (vastly superior to the canned variety and not even comparable to the bottled option, which I actually refuse to drink), letting my hair air dry from this morning’s outdoor swim, and generally killing time until 6:15 yoga.  It’s not a bad day.  It’s also the type of Tuesday I can kiss goodbye in a matter of weeks provided that some paperwork gets wrapped up in the next day or two, putting me on a new career path that is hopefully closer to what I think I want to do with myself. 

If that fails, perhaps I will break things off with Max and seek out a wealthy old man to be my mate that can support a lifestyle that enables me to dine at Spruce at least once per week.  

I am newly obsessed with this dining destination, tucked onto sleepy Sacramento Street up in the very tony Laurel Heights Hood, after this past Saturday.  Max received a Spruce gift certificate over the holidays which meant that once we were able to secure a reservation (over 1.5 months in advance…) we could sit down and order to our heart’s content without dreading the check’s arrival.  Three appetizers?  Priciest entrée on the menu for me?  Bottle of wine we’d otherwise never order while dining out?  Check, check, and check.  No pun intended. 

We started off with a glass of celebratory Prosecco (well actually we started off with martinis down the street but that was a separate event), and then dug into appetizer number one:  foie gras done two ways -- 1)  a delicate pan-seared chunk, and 2)  a creamy pate served with a dollop of pureed pineapple (it worked).  At the end of the day, foie gras is really not much more than fat.  If you’ve ever cooked it before, it’s a quick process that you need to oversee closely, else you’re liable to watch this seriously high-priced organ meat liquefy right before your eyes.  That said, it is much tastier than eating a hunk of fat that you’ve peeled, say, from the crisped skin of a turkey or edges of a prime rib.  It’s all in the texture, as it begins to melt into umami-goodness as soon as it lands on your tongue. 

We should’ve ended the pate experience at that, but we were charmed by the charcuterie menu and didn’t want it to feel neglected, so we tried just one item, the duck pate.  I guess we didn’t want the duck to feel that we are discriminatory, only open to geese – we are indeed equal opportunists.

Thus covered on the meaty side of things, we switched gears to appetizer number three, a small portion of fresh pasta tossed simply in copious amounts of butter and topped off with a generous shaving of black truffle.  I love it when you order truffles and they assure you that the little lump of pasta lightly garnished is worth it by giving you the weight of your truffle topping in ounces.  Or fragments of an ounce, rather.  Perhaps someday I shall try to make my fortune by moving to France, purchasing a truffle pig, and unearthing a few multi-pound mushrooms…

Is it too much to read about all this food?  I almost feel like a glutton just rehashing the memories of the meal on paper.  At the same time, the next time I’m eating a casual weekday meal of (canned) tuna (in olive oil) with broccoli over pasta, I can read this and make believe that the bite of pasta is covered in truffles, or that the bite of tuna is actually a chunk of roasted sea bass, combined on my fork with a piece of a lobster, smothered in a rich and lemony beurre blanc.  And I can recall what it was like moving onto dessert, and nibbling at the rich chocolate concoction with hints of citrus and passion fruit.  I can remember washing it down with my final sips of sancerre and savoring the last moments at the table, tucked away in a quiet corner with the candle light flickering, before heading out and stepping eyes half shut out of decadence-induced sleepyness into a cab. 

Perhaps I won’t actually try to remember the meal when I’m eating tuna and pasta given that I’m pretty sure my imigination isn’t strong enough to trick my palette to that degree, but having the details of a really great meal captured on paper is a permanent reminder of how great food can be.