My Food & Travel Writing class went to Blue Water Cafe tonight. We have to review it and write an article for class next week. The meal was part of the class fee, and since I get classes for free, the meal was free for me too. Well, except for drinks, but I only had one glass of sparkling wine (which cost $15!), so it wasn't entirely free, but about as close as you can get at a place like this. A person could set back a few hundred dollars easily.
We had about 12 people or so at a long table and I sat with some really cool people. We've seen each other in class 3 times already but we've never had a chance to actually talk to each other. There's never really time for us to chat socially during class, and we don't have much of a break. But the easiest way to get to know a group of strangers is to sit down with them and share a meal and have a glass of wine or a cocktail. In about a half hour, you'll feel like you've known each other for ages.
One of the people in our class is the PR person for the company that owns Blue Water Cafe, CinCin, and Ouest. So she hooked us up. We had a special menu - we all shared this two-tiered tower of fresh seafood. Actually there were 3 sets of these towers for all of us, so there was a LOT. The girl beside me had similar tastes as I did, so we both had never tried raw oysters before. I really don't understand why a person would ever want to put that in their mouth. Yuck. Gross. Blech.
There were also fresh scallops, mussels, shrimp, smoked salmon, seared tuna, california rolls, spicy tuna rolls. It was a mountain of food. My pictures of this turned out crappy, so I'm trying to get someone in the class to send me their photos of the tower. I felt like the sushi rolls were nothing special.
For entrees, we could choose between the sablefish, beef tenderloin, and some sort of vegetarian dish. I got the sablefish, which was very nice, but it was served with pea shoots as the veg, and it tasted like alfalfa sprouts to me, and kept getting stuck in my teeth. But the potatoes were lovely, as was the fish. Nice and buttery texture.
Dessert was a choice of sorbet or a chocolate lava type cake. I got the chocolate. Totally decadent and over the top. I am still so bloated right now that I can't sleep. Was a lovely meal though. And it was nice to get to know these people on a different level than we're used to. One guy is a chef and it's great to get his perspective on things. And honestly, it's nice to be around people who are as psycho about food as I am. You should've seen it - when the food came out, everyone immediately whipped out their cameras and began snapping away. Pretty hilarious.
Here are the only couple of photos that turned out well for me. I'll replace the seafood tower pictures as soon as someone sends me some better ones.
Seafood tower with shrimp, scallops, oysters, tuna, california rolls, spicy tuna rolls, seaweed salad, smoked salmon
Sablefish, pea shoots, mashed potatoes
Chocolate cake, vanilla ice cream, and some weird crispy thing
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