viva la french food

we've been trying to set up a house dinner for the last few weeks and had finally settled on thursday night. however, Nisha has some kind of accounting licensing exams coming up and so we decided to have two dinners: one on thursday minus our studious girl and one for all of us in a few weeks when exams are over.

since Rita works in a swank French restaurant that offers a 50% discount to employees during the month of january, we decided to head there. the restaurant was called the orrery, and i would have taken pictures except it wasn't that kind of place. :-) i have never never had a proper French meal before (croque madames and frites don't count!), so i didn't know what to expect. but it was awesome! Rita, Ly, Alex, and I were treated to:

- free champagne.

- free bread - all kinds - olive bread, sea salt bread, foccacia (our waiter was Italian :-), etc.

- free soup - really good, no idea what it was but i think it had truffle oil and a lot of cream sauce. mmmm.

- first course - i had scallops, which came with truffle stuff and squash stuff to dip them in. again, really good.

- sauvignon blanc

- free prawn (prawns with heads) risotto - i wanted to lick the bowl.

- some sort of red wine

- second course - i had duck l' orange, complimented with roots vegetables (tasty) and beet root puree. i normally hate beets but i actually liked this! probably had butter or something in it. :0

- free cheese plate - the only cheese i had heard of was goat. but they were all tasty.

- free port wine

- souffle with cognac ice cream

- free petit fours

they must really love Rita there. :-)

this was the most time i've spent with my housemates and i have to say, we had a blast! we were all making fun of each other for stuff you only find out when you live with people - one of us is a slow eater, one of us frequently comes in drunk and then drags ass in the morning (guess who that one is), etc.

i laughed so hard (with a mouth full of souffle, mind you) that my chest hurt. i laughed for so long that Ly started laughing, then Alex started. we made quite a scene actually, in the middle of a quiet, posh restaurant. as i told my housemates, you can dress me up, but you can't take me out...