It's Still Official

Well, it’s been one calendar year of matrimonial bliss, officially, as of Sunday. I’d say we’ve had a good run so far.

Sunday we went out to dinner for the official celebration. Obviously, I had to work all day, so I snapped my briefcase shut and loosened my tie as my 5:00 meeting wound down. To my surprise, my boss got the hint, looked at his watch, and said, “Oops, you gotta get outta here. Have a great time tonight.”

Which didn’t occur to me until I was standing in front of the elevator. “That’s weird, I thought. Tim was unusually nice.” Then I thought, “I wonder who’d win if a gorilla fought a bear?”

I got home to find out that the Bean had been a helldog all day (in protest over dad having to work, I presume), and she had Crissy all worn out. We were both in need of a little pampering.

When we stepped up to the hostess stand at The Gramercy Tavern, the hostess said, “It’s your anniversary tonight?” I looked at Crissy. She looked at me like I was nuts-Hell no I didn’t tell them that. Then the hostess handed us an envelope.

Amy Kubala, a tried and true member of our all-star team, found out where we were eating dinner and sent us a gift certificate to the restaurant. You got us good, Kub. Nice work.

They took our jackets and led us to a little corner nook booth, where we sunk in and rolled up our sleeves. Before we could even get the menus open, they served up a complimentary glass of champagne for our anniversary. Great start.

The food was fantastic. Thankfully Crissy wrote everything down, because I would've butchered the names of what we ate. But I’ll say this. Almost everything on the menu read like a strange blend of ingredients that sounded like a 5th grade science project. Dishes like gizzard puree in a Mexican yogurt chutney. That’s not really one of the dishes, but they were sort of like that. Regardless, every dish was like this ingredient alchemy that created a strange but incredible flavor in your mouth. It's what I imagine great wealth to taste like. Crissy was in heaven, pretending she was Padma on Top Chef. It was pretty impressive. Here’s what we actually got:

We started with a light puff pastry stuffed with an olive tapenade over shredded parmesan, and olive rolls served with butter and sea salt. Next was a shrimp citrus salad on a bed of noodle-shaped celery root in a Dijon mustard sauce, and veal cappinatti with sage and cauliflower. All ridiculous.

Then Crissy got a walnut chive seabass, and I got a filet and a braised flatiron steak. I felt like a rube for ordering it medium rather than the suggested medium rare, but the waitress did an excellent job of hiding her scorn. To cleanse the palate, they served us vanilla panna cotta with a scoop of coconut sorbet and a sliver of pineapple.

Just as we were unbuttoning our pants and throwing back the last sips our our freaking delicious wine (’05 Santenay La Comme Dessus…whatever that is) the waitress delivered two more glasses of champagne. “These are from a Tim Galles?”

My boss. The sneaky bastard. Now I'll be expected to do a good job at work.

After dinner came dessert. Again, the menu read like a fruit fly experiment to me. So I covered my eyes and pointed. We ended up with a chocolate zucchini cake and a peanut butter semifreddo with caramel sauce. As we waited for the dessert, Crissy and I pretended we were too full to eat anymore, then smashed our faces into our plates like it was a pie-eating contest when they arrived. It was scary good.

We ended up getting a little unexpectedly saucy, so we got the check and shuffled out of the dining room giggling. At the front, Crissy stuffed her purse with handfuls of matchbooks as I put on my coat, and we stumbled into a cab.

We sat in the cab with bleary eyes, fat guts, and open-mouthed smiles, thinking about what a great night we’d had. “People must really like you,” the waitress had mentioned when we broke out the gift certificate from Kub.

It sure feels like it. It feels like someone up there likes us these days.