dine-out diet: week two

When you are cutting calories, you tend to focus more on the ones you are getting. So, the lesson after week two, is to be more selective with my restaurant choices, which were hit and miss. The Hit: On Wednesday, I attended i Trulli’s 15th anniversary party, and managed to stay on course. As you would imagine, they had an Italian bounty on display, featuring all sorts of goodies. I passed by the pork, turnips, breaded fried olives, mountain of cookies and focused on the table of seafood. There I was able to scoop up cold seafood salad, oysters, and octopus. I confess to having one mussel with bread stuffing on top! My favorite taste of the night, though, goes to Patti Jackson’s sauteed dandelion leaves, which were lightly bitter tasting. (see photo, left) I am still thinking about them and put i Trulli on my list of places to return to. Friday night, we headed west to Trestle on Tenth. I’m not saying it was bad, but just not fantastic. For the appetizer, I split some oysters and smoked trout salad with Bob. The strange thing about the oyster dish was how it arrived on the table. I am surprised nobody noticed this, or maybe that was the way it was intended to look? (click here to see more photos from that night) When the fish arrived on the table my heart sank. (top photo) How did I miss that this fish was served whole? It freaks me out to have to deal with the bones with every bite, and plus look at the tail and face of the fish, feeling bad as I am eating it. Sigh. It did taste good, but was tainted by the presentation. Saturday, I stayed in the ‘hood and visited Beppe. Everyone at our table loved the food, I thought my dish was good too, the halibut with brussel sprouts and cauliflower (photo, left). There was supposed to be something almond with the dish, but it didn’t come through, as opposed to the Commerce dish of last week. Sunday, my friend Judith came to visit, so a return visit to i Trulli seemed appropriate, especially since her father is from the Puglian area of Italy. After reading the menu online we slogged through the icy rain, excited to try most of the appetizers. Unfortunately, we arrived between lunch and dinner, only the bar menu was available. We still managed to do extremely well, with the endive salad, which had a hard boiled egg and parsley and matched it with grilled octopus with the tiniest fingerling potatoes, black olives, cauliflower and lemon confit. (photo above) It was a treat to sit by the window, have the restaurant to ourselves and catch up. More next week.