What I Ate: November 5, 2009 (South Congress Cafe)

Dinner: We ate at South Congress Cafe where we started with the Calamari semolina breaded sliced calamari steaks served with an orange ginger red chile sauce. The calamari was very tender and not one bit chewy - almost like soft gnocchi in texture. The breading was a bit thick - almost like chicken fried batter. I think we preferred the calamari from Vespaio Enoteca a few doors down, but this calamari was quite delicious.

Tina had the Sea Bass Gnocchi a pan seared sea bass filet atop homemade herb gnocchi, roasted fennel, oyster mushrooms, watercress and chive buerre blanc. The Chilean sea bass was perfectly cooked and worked really well with the fennel and oyster mushrooms. We both felt the gnocchi was too strongly flavored to be paired with the light, buttery fish. Even so, only a couple gnocchi were left on the dish when Tina was done and she considered asked for more bread to sop up the buerre blanc.

I had the Lollipop Pork Chop seared to medium, finished with our homemade apple sauce and served with white truffle mac and cheese and vegetables du jour. I had so much of the calamari that I only had room for about half the chop and the vegetables. I didn't even manage to touch the mac & cheese (although Tina did and declared it cheesy - which she says about all mac & cheese). The pork chop was a bit too thick and the very center didn't get any seasoning. Thick chops like this work if the pork has a lot of natural flavor (like a farm raised Berkshire) but this one didn't quite have enough flavor for me.

Lunch: Tina went out and got us a foot long oven-roasted chicken breast sandwich from Subway. Unfortunately, the sandwich artist that made it was really bad at it and the sandwich was a bit of a mess. Also, for some reason it was less flavorful than usual.