Tuesday, October 09, 2018

The FIL's Birthday Dinner at Fratini La Trattoria


With the celebratory week of Sukkot just over, we also celebrated the man's dad's birthday with a meal at Fratini La Trattoria. It's tough for two people to have a meal here unless you've got a big appetite. A table of four is ideal to share the food. The parentals' conservative tastebuds mean that this restaurant's food is absolutely suitable for them.

We don't stock wine at home, so couldn't utilize its BYOB offer (Tuesdays to Thursdays). Bought a bottle of wine instead. They had a lovely 2016 full-bodied red from Ornellaia. Not that I'm any connoisseur of wine, but I know what my palate enjoys—I've somehow gravitated towards Italian reds from Tuscany and French reds from Burgundy.

We hadn't visited the restaurant since July and welcomed its familiar flavors. Food was dependably delicious. The cold appetizers were different, and still very well done. The kitchen seems to have a standard offering of meats, and they do it well in the form of braised beef cheeks, slipper lobsters grilled with cheese, herb-crusted lamb chops and pan-seared cod fish. The bed of vegetables the meats sit on will differ. We had lots of broccoli and asparagus for this meal. The lamb chops were especially impressive this round.

I'm not sure if this menu changes at all for the mains or choices of pasta. But we chose a different set of pasta this round- a seafood aglio e olio, and a linguine of beef slices with tomato gravy. I was hoping for simpler pasta, but they still don't offer that. Ah well. I ate loads of the linguine aglio e olio, and passed over the prawns.

Dessert was plentiful. There were butter cookies which I loved when I brushed off the sugar dust. They didn't put much sugar in the cookie itself. It was all butter. Hahahaha. The parentals enjoyed the other dessert items of panna cotta, tiramisu and creme brûlée. Luckily I didn't bother getting an additional birthday cake. It would have been simply too much sugar ingested, even by their standards.

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