Happy Birthday! (and a restaurant review)

I don't really need to say it here, but happy birthday to my wonderful fiancee. A mid-week birthday is rather unfortunate, in that she's coming home from work fairly tired already (and I'm tired too), so it's hard to fully enjoy it, especially with school again tomorrow. We headed to downtown Providence for an early dinner at DownCity. I'd been there once before, for lunch. Dinner was a rather different experience.

After we'd ordered, we were brought two kinds of flat bread and a white bean hummus, which went well together. Then the appetizer we'd ordered arrived: Raspberry and Hot Pepper Baked Brie with toasted bread. Baked Brie is always good in my book, but the raspberry and hot pepper flavors were nice, surprisingly complementary additions. Lauren ordered the Penne Baked With Chicken and Sweet Corn, which she expected to be a bit on the dull side,¹ but which instead turned out to be quite good and flavorful. My burger, on the other hand, seemed a bit dull. Not, by any means, bad, just not as good as I'd hoped. The first time I ate there, I had the Monte Cristo, which was excellent; so it goes.

In any case, the star of the meal was, without a doubt, the Sweet Potato Fries. These massive slabs of yam-like goodness were probably the best I've ever had. They seemed like the chef had somehow managed to lightly crisp an outer crust and fill it with a creamy mixture of mashed sweet potatoes and pure amazingness. Wow.

Our waiter, despite the relative calm of the restaurant during our early dinner, was fairly inattentive: we waited a long time between our drink order and the rest of it, my water glass sat empty longer than I would have liked at one point, and he was slow to take away our dishes and bring our check. The food itself, however, was not only served relatively quickly, but in a most timely manner. We hadn't quite finished the hummus when our Brie arrived, and we were just polishing off the refined cheesy goodness when our main courses arrived.

One last thing to note: the decor was very nice, right down to the details. My favorite detail: the sink in the bathroom (there are two, labeled "either / or") is a slightly concave rectangle of thick glass with a funky minimalist fixture dispensing water onto it. Very cool.

The price was about right for a classy night out², around $70 with a glass of wine each, the tip, and more food than we could possibly have eaten. I guess that, by the way, is what marks this as a distinctly American place. We basically ordered an appetizer, a meal for each of us, and an extra side of fries for Lauren, and when we were ready for our leftovers to be boxed up, I said in all seriousness that I wasn't sure we could finish in one sitting just what we boxed up. There was just that much food. With our waiter's tardiness in taking it away, we nibbled it down to remainders we could eat in one sitting, but we really did feel like four of us could have eaten with all the food we were served. 

1. You may be wondering, "why order something you expect to be dull?" She was trying to be good with respect to her diet. I don't know whether the cream sauce really qualified as being good, but it was probably more in line with her diet than the baked scallops with bacon, sherry, and melted Vermont cheddar that she was eying up. 

2. Which is to say, way more than my cheap self wants to pay for dinner, but a fine birthday splurge.³

3. Lunch prices are rather easier on the wallet, incidentally. The entire menu, including prices, can be found on DownCity's website.  

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