To celebrate my friend’s brithday we decided it would be fun to go out to a new restaurant and one that was a bit fancier for the occasion. Because we are not city people, we choose Summer Winter in Burlington, MA. We liked the idea that they used local products and even had their own on site green house. We had a full view of the green house from our table which was fun!
So how was our night? Fun, but the meal was overall rather bland.
I started with a Bibb lettuce salad with almonds and manchego cheese topped with tomato cumin vinaigrette. This was actually quite good all thanks to the vinaigrette which was the right amount of tangy and creamy.
My friend, Mrs E had the “Summer Winter Salad” with greens from the green house, local apple, Belgian endive, and cider vinaigrette, which she liked.
Her husband, Mr. C opted for the split pea soup, but he though Mrs. E makes a better soup.
For our main course, Mrs. E went with one of the specials. She had an Asian chicken dish which was the best dinner of the three. She got 5 pieces of fried chicken, fried rice and broccoli and a soy sauce dressing.
Mr. C had the 16oz bone in rib eye with mash potatoes. Now, this part was fun: for each “grilled main” dish, you get to pick your our sauce! They have 6 choices, but our server recommended Mom’s sauce which is a balsamic base. Mr. C liked the meal, but didn’t think it was anything special.
I felt the same way about my dinner. Everything was cooked ok, just nothing great. I had the roasted half chicken with lemon garlic and rosemary and for my starch I choose Mom’s corn custard.
Well, it turns our the corn custard is really code for corn bread. This was also bland and I added some salt to give it a bit more flavor. I was actually really disappointed with the chicken. The skin was not crispy…it was basically limp and I decided to removed it.
That left me with very plan chicken, since all of the flavoring had gone with the chicken skin. So thank goodness for Mom’s sauce to rescue my bland meal.
Now, because this was a birthday dinner we all had dessert. The birthday girl opted for the chocolate caramel tart with chocolate marshmallow ice cream. She thought the tart was too rich and was only able to eat a few bites.
I had the warm sticky toffee pudding. It was good, but not what I thought it would be. It was expecting something gooey. It was more of a toffee muffin with caramel sauce, but the best dessert of the night, so the three of us ended up splitting it since it was also better than Mr. C’s pineapple upside down cake.
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