happy bday v!

t says: We’ve been celebrating v’s birthday quite a bit – but that’s because she’s worth it! Well – yesterday featured the latest installment of the v-b-day series – an “after hours” session at DiBruno Brothers!
For those of you who only go to the CC location, the Italian Market one will feel cramped and small. But! It’s a great venue for one of these tastings, where you have several rounds of finger foods (antipasti, olive oils & salts, cheeses, charcuterie, dessert) and you’re allowed to taste anything you want in the store for no additional cost! No. For real. Anything. And it doesn’t have to be “planned” ahead of time. Like v totally asked off the cuff, “can I try some pate?” and boom – 90 seconds later we had a head-to-head pate tasting. After seeing this, I kinda went a little “high-maintenance” and just started picking out random expensive things to try. For example – a $30/lb cheese? Yes I’ll try that! Jamon Iberico that’s $130/lb? We’ll have a sample for everyone please! The only thing they didn’t let us do was operate the meat slicer … But I have to say that as much fun as it was to pick out things to try, the pre-set courses that were coming out were also no slouches, either! Between the surprisingly-good prosciutto they had (it was like prosciutto 2.0 – twice the flavor!) and the “cheesecake” dessert (they topped a wedge of Delice de Bourgogne with some cherries and stuck a candle in it, and voila! Instant savory birthday “cake”), we were wow’d at every turn. I don’t have many pictures to show because they reveal our identities, but what I do have a picture of is this:

s’more … it was max 365 gruyere topped with homemade torrone and a piece of stone ground chocolate – all of which I’ve had in the past and not really liked – but holy crap – putting them together was a roller-coaster of flavors that blew me away. It was insane.

EDIT: Nevermind! Others took pictures!!