Got Garlic?

I have a hangover....

A garlic hangover, that is. Since I gave J Jersey Boys tickets for his birthday, last night we went to the city for a special evening out. We planned to start out our evening in North Beach where we had reservations for dinner at The Stinking Rose. This was our first visit to this particular restaurant. I had heard about it from my good friend Llama Momma and had seen it profiled on The Travel Channel as well.

Never knowing how bad traffic in the city is going to be, we left early. It turned out that traffic was non-existent and we arrived in the North Beach neighborhood at least an hour before our dinner reservation. After briefly exploring the neighborhood, we decided to get some coffee while we waited. We stopped in at this cool little espresso place and ordered an americano (for J) and a latte (for me). While sitting at our table near the window we noticed a number of people stopping to take their photo in front of the establishment. Curious, I googled Caffe Trieste when we got home and discovered that it was the first place to serve espressso on the West Coast. In addition it had been used in the filming of several movies and TV shows. It was also where Frances Ford Coppola wrote much of this obscure little screenplay. Anyway- after enjoying our coffee in ignorance, we walked over to the restaurant for dinner.

After being seated at a cozy table for two, we ordered the bagna calda appetizer- whole garlic cloves roasted in olive oil and butter with anchovies. As yummy as that was, it was all over for me when I discovered the garlic rose relish. Our meal then progressed to prime rib (for J) and the chicken asparagus pasta (for me). We finished our evening off with the garlic ice cream sundae and more coffee. Yes you read correctly- garlic infused ice cream. And it was yummy!

After dinner we drove to the Curran Theater to see the show. This was the second time I've seen Jersey Boys, but a first for J. I have to say, I think I liked it better this time around... The one bad thing was that I kept burping garlic up (hmmmm.... I wonder why that was!), I pretty much spent the entire evening sucking on altoids non-stop, in order to avoid offending those around us. I hope I suceeded...

We arrived back home around midnight. After waking Teenage Son to let him know that we had returned safely (Yay- no babysitter to pay!) and taking a couple of tums to prevent a middle-of-the-night-heartburn attack. We hit the sack and I awoke this morning with... the worst morning breath ever! Oh well, I guess that's the price you have to pay...

And you know what? It was totally worth it!