One of my favorite things about being an adult is attending dinner parties with friends. Last night we met two other couples, our old friends Jill and Bret and our next door neighbor, Gary and his girlfriend, for dinner at Lucia. In case you have been living under a rock, Lucia is THE hot ticket dining destination in Dallas right now. Reservations are very difficult to get. You have to call the restaurant on the 1st day of the month at 9am and leave a message to get a reservation the following month (i.e., call April 1 for reservations in May) and you pretty much get whatever day and time they give you. The chef is the former chef from Lola, David Ugyur, and the menu is Italian. All pastas are made fresh in-house and all meats are also cured in-house. The food is to die for and, in my opinion, this is the best restaurant in Dallas today.
We met there last night for our 8:30pm reservations and we did it right. It's so wonderful to eat an amazing dinner with friends that love food and wine and are willing to try anything and everything. We ordered practically everything on the menu. A large salumi platter, prunes stuffed with foie gras, tagliatelle with veal and chicken liver ragu, cavatelli with artichokes, gnudi with hedgehog mushrooms, white risotto with scallops, pasta with fennel sausage and broccoli rabe, braised pork shoulder, slow cooked beef tongue, veal chops with brown butter root vegetables, roasted cauliflower soup with garlic oil and then desserts - Italian donut holes with chocolate sauce and bananas and cannolis filled with pistachio cream. Of course, we also ordered 3 bottles of Italian wine to wash it all down. Bret renamed their foie gras prunes and referred to them as "foie gras poppers" all night, much to the amusement of our waitress.
Dinner took 3 hours but it seemed like it flew by. Conversation was non-stop all night, especially for me and Jill. I talk a lot and Jill talks a lot but when you get us together and add wine, it is pretty insane. At any rate, we were the last to leave the restaurant last night. You know it was a successful dinner when (i) you close down the restaurant and (ii) the next to last table to leave stops by on their way out to let you know how much they enjoyed listening to your crazy dinner conversation all night. Even the owner's wife came by and laughed her ass off when Jill began explaining to her the "proper" way to light a person on fire (don't ask, this comes from a long and sordid tale when we were first year attorneys).
Good times, fun times, great friends. Occasionally I remember just how lucky I am to know such amazing, funny, genuine people.
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