To the Nines: Mission Accomplished

Thanks to everyone who weighed in on the anniversary outfit debate. Your comments were all very helpful and insightful. And the winner is:


Top #1 with Dress #3! I know many of you were pushing for super-slinky Dress #2, but I just didn't think I could (or should) pull it off. Be sure you take notice of Airan's snappy new suit. (I picked out the green shirt and tie.)

The evening was delightful. We left the baby girls in Uncle David's very capable hands and had a lovely and elegant dinner at Tru. I talked Airan into taking surreptitious pictures of our seven-course dining experience with his camera phone, so y'all can share in the visual feast, if not the food itself.


Okay, so we actually forgot to take pictures of both the provencal parfait and the amuse-bouche, but every good meal must be accompanied by bread, right? We Americans love to fill up on the stuff. So here's my half-eaten bread. (It was delicious. I consider myself something of an expert roll baker, but their simple french-bread-style roll was beyond my modest skills.)


Next course: bento boxes of summer vegetable terrines and salads. (I think Airan had some gross seafood thing for this course.) Delightful! Of course, you can put marcona almonds on just about anything and I'll say it's delightful. (Except gross seafood.)


Asparagus and artichoke salad. The yellow stuff was amazing.


For the soup course, carrot and ginger soup served cappuccino style. I was a little nervous when it came in a coffee cup -- you know I'm no fan of the java. However, the soup was coffee-free. Thank heavens.


Fennel, spring onion, and robiola gratin. Cheese and crusty bread topping. You can't go wrong.


Israeli cous cous with summer zucchini ribbons and asparagus puree. My favorite course of the evening. Unfortunately, I was getting rather full at this point, so I think I only ate about half of it. I should have asked for a doggy bag.


Me enjoying my Israeli cous cous.


My main course: chickpea panisse, tomato marmalade, and crispy parsley. Meh. I didn't love it. Airan's main course was much better:


Coffee-scented California squab, chanterelles, puffed wild rice and farro with chile negro jus. Yum, despite this coffee-scented business. The thing was covered with strawberries, which seems odd but which was in fact delicious.


As the night wore on, my wine pairings started to stack up on me. How's a girl supposed to keep up with a new wine for every course? I was in big trouble by this point.


Cheese plate. We commonly dine on nothing but cheese, so strange cheeses are nothing new to us, but this was a very nice assortment of fromage. The best part -- the Roquefort. I think I could eat nothing but Roquefort for the rest of my life.


To prepare us for the never-ending dessert courses, the apricot tea shooter. So good!

Airan is a complete gentleman, so he was kind enough to trade half of his dessert plate for half of my dessert plate. So here's what I ended up with:


A citrusy bread pudding and raspberry upside-down cake.

And Airan had this:


Two chocolates, one of them delightful, the other buried in the flavor of coffee.

And to help us celebrate the occasion, Israel (our excellent waiter) brought out this (like we needed even more dessert):




And the desserts just keep coming!


I don't want to sound like I'm complaining, because I'm definitely not. It's just that, by this point in the evening, we had no room whatsoever for enjoying Gale Gand's sweet delights. Luckily, we got to take this batch of delightful morsels home.


And this is me, after seven courses' worth of wine pairings, very nearly unable to walk myself back to the car.

And because I was pretty easily amused by the end of the night:

Here's a nice shot of the crazy sinks in the bathrooms.

And the personalized menu they sent us home with (get out your magnifying glasses):

Overall, the evening was a rousing success! Now, I kept telling myself I shouldn't compare Tru to Charlie Trotter's, the only comparable restaurant Airan and I have had the good fortune to enjoy, but it was hard not to compare the two. I have to say that Charlie's is still the favorite of my heart, but Tru was an absolute pleasure from beginning to end.

And thus ends our 9th-anniversary celebration. Whatever shall we do next year? I'm entertaining suggestions.