after dinner sneeze

t says: Yesterday, I wanted to go to 500 degrees.  I really just wanted to bite into a juicy burger.  g wasn’t super-enthusiastic about it, but was willing to give it a whirl because it was a new place.  But then, as we were walking to 500, we realized that it wasn’t quite burger weather (well, unless you were at a barbecue).  It was warm, but not yet oppressingly hot, so we wanted to dine outside … perhaps with a light summer dinner (I had eaten a late lunch) … and some refreshing, chilled wines.  In short, it was rose weather.  But I had no rose!  So where could we find one?  Duh … Tria.  We decided that if they could seat us soon, we’d stay.  We were promised a 15 minute wait, which at Tria, translated into a 5 minute wait.  We got seated and were ready to eat and drink.

6/2010, 8pm, Party of 2. The first matter of business was to choose the wine.  We were going to find rose.  Interestingly, there weren’t many options.  g went for some NV pinot noir bubbly from Albequerque (never had a New Mexican wine before) – it boasted that it was made in in the traditional Champagne method (i.e. bottle fermentation), so it had some promise.  g was very pleased, happy with the mouthful of cherries that it resembled.  I went for a still Pinot Noir rose whose origin I can’t remember (although it was mis-listed as a “white” on the menu).  It had some cherry up front, but changed over to a strawberry jam on the finish.  It was so good – exactly what I wanted.

We went for the grilled asparagus, bean, artichoke, and pine nut salad.  It seemed so simple, but it was wonderful.  The beans and asparagus were the perfect textures, while the artichokes lent a bit of zing.  I just can’t say enough about this salad … except “go there and try it!”.  For cheese, we went for the triple creme from Burgundy.  It was like a buttery cream cheese, which is both good and bad.  It was good in the sense that it was rich with wonderful mouthfeel and velvety creaminess.  It made us want to sit back and slowly indulge in it.  But, it really didn’t have much depth of flavor.  The allagash cherries it was served with were quite powerful and easily overtook the cheese in my mouth.  That said, the cheese’s mild flavors were a nice foil to the “bam” of the salad.  However, ultimately, I think if I had to choose again, I would have gone with one of our favorite Tria cheeses: Tete-de-Moine.

I guess we weren’t that hungry because we were full by the end of the meal (although we did go through an extra serving of bread with our cheese).  The food was great, the wine was great, and the service was great.  Really … we’ve never had a bad time at Tria.