5th Anniversary Dinner

Laura and I celebrated our 5th anniversary by going to a unique restaurant in Broad Ripple called L'Exploratuer. The restaurant was set in an old house, and there wasn't a bad table in the place. It was no surprise that Indianapolis Monthly rated this as one of the top ten restaurants in the city, once we started our meal.

After great indecision we both decided to have the tasting menu, but first things first, I ordered us a split bottle of champagne. The menu started with an amuse buche (a bite size niblet set out by the chef to tempt your palate and set the tone for the rest of the meal), which was shrimp cake.

Following the amuse buche, we had the most amazing scallop ceviche. A ceviche is a preparation of cooking seafood using acid instead of heat. In this case, the scallops were cooked using a lime juice and garnished with habenero peppers and avocado, served with homemade tortilla chips. To make this great dish even better, it was served with a Geverst (I forgot to mention that the tasting menu included a different wine for each course).

I should mention at this point that the meal was very well timed with the waiter coming at the right time to serve each part. In fact, when serving the food she brought another waiter so our plates were presented at exactly the same time.

For the next course, we had a simple winter salad of fresh greens, various mushrooms and topped with a black truffle oil. The wine for this course was a Fume Blanc.

The main course was beyond imagination (at least mine, perhaps not the chef's). The main course was a preparation of wild halibut over pearl potatoes which were cooked in duck fat. The halibut was topped with thinly sliced pieces of chorizo layered to give the appearance of fish scales. Underneath was a red pepper sauce as well as figs. The halibut was accompanied by a Bordeaux with blackberry and cherry aromas. This combination of flavors in the halibut along with the chorizo was unique and the texture of the potatoes with the fish was superb. Laura and I both raved about this dish all night.

Since it was our anniversary we decided to go all out and finish our meal with dessert, and here's where Laura and I parted ways and each tried something different. While I had a banana creme custard with chocolate, Laura went all fruity and something with no chocolate. Shame on her.

The fun and joy that we had during this meal at L'Explorateur was excellent, but pales in comparison to just a moment spent with Laura.

**this mostly grammatically correct blog was brought to you courtesy of Laura's typing skills, under Jeremy's dictation. Please note that the last sentence was purely dictated and not altered by Laura in any way**