Today we celebrate 5 years of wedding bliss!
Ron surprised me today at work with a dozen long stem roses and a bouquet of tulips for our infusion center. It’s nice that we live in the city so that he can just drop by like this but a few years ago, he did send me a bouquet to my office so found a way around it. My co-workers were all jealous but also very happy for me and wished me well. I’m taking vacation all of next week but will be vacationing in San Francisco, starting with a busy day planned for tomorrow.
The roses were very fragrant and came in three beautiful colors: red, pink, and peach.
After I got off work, Ron came to pick me up and we went to see an apartment. Our lease at our current apartment ends after August and we’d like to move in a bigger place and closer to downtown. This apartment was in a beautiful building and very well maintained, it smelled so clean and was nice and quiet. The manager offered us a great deal and would hold the apartment for us until we were ready to move so we told him we’d take it. I’ll update everyone on the address once we physically move. It’s 2 bedrooms + office and 1 bath, there is 1 walk in closet and 2 smaller ones and the kitchen has a gas range! (I’m really looking forward to cooking more on it.) There are so many other lovely things about the apartment that we couldn’t believe we were lucky enough to get it… let’s just hope everything else falls into place.
After the apartment viewing, we headed to dinner at L’ardoise (pronounced LARD-WAZ) on Noe Street in the Castro. It’s a little French bistro with what I found to be delicious food and excellent service. Again, as I mentioned previously, my digital camera had gone kaput so I only had my phone camera with no flash so these pictures don’t do the food justice on how mouthwateringly beautiful it looked… nor tasted.
We had the escargot appetizer. The escargot were removed from their shells and served in a hollowed out roasted potato with a garlic parsley sauce. The sauce was so good, I soaked it all up with the baguette they provided. The baguette was really delicious as well, I could hardly control myself from finishing off the two baskets of bread they brought to the table, it reminded of the fresh baguettes from our time in France.
We also tried their tiger prawn ravioli. Ron really liked these, especially the texture of the filling, the tiger prawns had a bit of a bite mixed with the creamy sauce inside.
I ordered their hanger steak served with pomme frites (the picture is horrible… but oh so delicious). A garlic aioli accompanied the pomme frites which was so good but I can still taste the garlic now. The hanger steak was perfectly medium rare as I requested and whatever the sauce was on it was so good, it didn’t overpower the meat flavor but rather complimented it.
Ron had the almond crusted sole with a lobter bisque reduction and mushrooms. On the first bite, you could hardly taste the fish and there were so many almonds, not that we minded since we love nuts, but as you dug deeper, the fish was there. The mushrooms and lobster bisque reduction were delicious though, I’d love to have a bowl of that as soup.
As you can imagine, we were quite full after this meal, but pleasantly. The service was extremely attentive and pleasant with the staff whisking away plates as we finished and refilling our water quickly. The atmosphere is romantic as the lights are dimmed and each table has a single tealight. It was a lovely place to spend our anniversary.
L’ardoise Bistro
151 Noe Street