Buzio's for a Birthday Party

Saturday started off with the last of the Trader Joe's pumpkin pancake mix.  This digital griddle is awesome and has really come in handy for many things, but as far as using it for pancakes, you just can't top that.  They come out perfect everytime (almost).

Looks like we are approaching this time of year.  While Ryan was picking some things up on Friday he spotted some small boxes of Valentine's day chocolates and brought them home for us to enjoy a little early.  How cute!

Although we usually go out Friday night for dinner, we knew this week that we would be going out on Saturday for the birthday celebration of someone who Ryan works with.  They live near this restaurant called Buzio's, and everyone pretty much likes this restaurant, so that is where they party was.  I have some pictures of the food.  Ok, so I may have freaked some people out by trying to snap pictures of their food as it was being set in front of them...when I explained it was a blog thing I think some people didn't find me as crazy.  There were some Portuguese guests there as well and I did take some pictures of their food too.  I just wanted to give everyone an idea of the various dishes this place offers since I will never order (escpecially the meat ones) all of these dishes.

These are called Lapas (I think).

This dish looked beautiful.

This was a giant steak.

The Portuguese guy sitting next to me ordered this.  It looked like seafood and potatoes and I know he asked for some bread so he could dip it in this broth stuff.  It looked creamy.

This was a special on the menu.  It was a steak wrapped in bacon.

Large bowls of parmesan cheese.

Ryan had the penne in vodka sauce.  This dish also had chicken in it.

And last, but not least, and when I say last...yes my simple vegetarian dish was the last served.  I ordered the linguine primavera.  One thing I have noticed is that no matter which pasta I order with a dish, it is always a different pasta than expected.  Oh no worries, spaghetti will do just fine.  The menu said a light cream sauce and this was not super heavy, but not really light either.  It was also a little spicy, which was ok with me.  After drinking some wine before heading to the restaurant and chowing down on cheese, bread and olives before this meal came, you can imagine that there is plenty leftover in my fridge right now.

Dessert was tiramisu.

I do not usually like tiramisu, but this was actually very good.  I think what turned me off originally was that the one served at the Olive Garden (where I worked for 4 years) had gelatin in it, which I saw on the food label and since I do not eat gelatin it freaked me out and so I already was not a huge fan and that made me really not a big fan to know that some places used gelatin to give it a firm structure.  This version here was really tasty.

The restaurant Buzio's makes an awesome bananas foster dessert, and so someone had ordered this.  They bring this little cart over to the table to make the dessert table side.  It is always fun to watch the flames!

Wait...that's not the server...looks like the birthday boy has taken over the bananas foster station...I think I saw a lot of alcohol go into this dessert.

So that was our nice dinner out.  Lots of good food and good wine and good people to celebrate with.

Since we went out last night, our meal 'from scratch' was on Friday night.  If you haven't checked it out yet, we made cream of broccoli soup in a bread bowl and it was delicious.

QUESTIONS: What is your favorite Italian dish?  What is your favorite dessert?