The MET

I have a group of about 6 girlfriends I mingle with regularly, so when Christmas comes around I start getting ulcers about what to get them. how much to spend. what what what! Then I had a flash of idea. Why not go to a really nice restaurant and have a grand girls night out. Spend our dineros on a really nice social activity/bonding moment instead 6 different trinkets. Luckily my girlies thought my idea was brilliant. We also decided to put it off till after the holidays because organizing 7 very busy girls schedules over the holidays was basically impossible. So Last night we gussied up in our best duds.... for most of us that meant old bridesmaids dresses..... I wore heals for longer than 30 minutes for the first time. We felt fancy. I even got valet parking, I am so posh. And then we descended upon the Metropolitan in downtown SLC.

It was super fancy... when you think PF Changes is our usual fancy... they had cloth hand towels in the bathroom...whoo eee...then we heard the music...wha? Pink? Bruce Springsteen? Backstreet Boys...so random. We had a good giggle. As others started to arrive we felt slightly over dressed, but didn't care much. Probably the jeans the others were wearing cost double what our dresses cost... they were probably mostly Sundance folks and couldn't figure out why these women were taking pictures of their food. Again we didn't care much.

We started with a 'taste' of butternut squash soup. Yep they called it a taste. I was worried it would come out in a spoon, for just one sip. but it was actually a decent sized small bowl of deliciousness soup. Not to sweet not to savory, but just perfect.

Then since I was on a ritzy fritzy roll, I went for the million dollar special. Ok it wasn't a million dollars, but compared to my budget it could have been. It was a Bison Rib Eye Oscar style. Wha?? I'd never even heard that before. It was topped with this crab from heaven and a bearnaise sauce that made me want to cry with joy. and then to make it all happy some asparagus. YEA ME!

We could not end the night w/o a dessert. We'd heard accolades about the molten lava cake, but after the crush of finding out it wasn't on the menu that night, we went for Assorted Mousse Selection. There was a Strawberry mousse, a Chocolate Orange mousse, a Blueberry mousse, and a Gingerbread mousse. Molten Lava Cake was soon forgotten. They were so good, so light and so good. I would taste the chocolate-orange and say 'that is my favorite' then I'd taste the gingerbread and say ... 'that is my favorite' it was hard to say.

But the crown of the entire piece for me was the gingerbread confetti. they were so adorable!

I doubt any food network critic will be asking me anytime soon, but it was awesome. We really had a great night. Just don't go if you are in a hurry. It was a 3 hour dinner.