This week Husband and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary and since our schedules didn’t allow us to do dinner on the actual day itself, we went for a lovely brunch this past Sunday when the opportunity presented itself amidst the splendor of a beautiful autumn weekend.
We were on our way back toward the city from upstate and planned to stop for breakfast at Cracker Barrel, that culinary wonderland for middle Americans everywhere, but the place was overflowing with middle Americans from everywhere so we hit the road and kept looking. We passed a picturesque bed and breakfast with one of those cute b&b names like The Feather & The Rose or The Chocolate Owl or let’s call it the Cock and Crow and the sign out front said Sunday Brunch so we pulled over to check it out.
The interior was antique-laden and lovely just as you would expect and the brunch menu looked delicious except for the $30 per person prix fixe which seemed extravagant because it was. Considering we were thisclose to putting our name on a Cracker Barrel waiting list to order waffles and grits, a brunch that would run eighty bucks with tax and tip seemed indulgent. But Husband is a romantic and suggested we make it an anniversary brunch because sometimes I’m stupidly practical and need a push toward whimsy. He reminds me of this every year about this time but usually it’s to lament once again that I refused to give in to his request to have a mariachi band at our wedding. Let’s not even go there. Many things indicate wedding festivity to me but sombreros with dangling pompoms do not make that list.
In case you haven’t eaten yet and are waiting for your pizza delivery I’ll tell you what we had: Husband’s appetizer of shrimp cocktail featured delectable shrimp the size of a lumberjack’s fist, I’m telling you they were huge. If I saw shrimp this big that were still alive I’d ask for ID. My ricotta-filled crepe was infused with a berry glaze and a succulent, perfect blackberry perched on top. Both of our selections were heavenly.
I’m a meat and potatoes girl so I had steak and eggs, rare and over, just as ordered. Husband chose tarragon chicken with basmati rice and cranberry compote. The lemon dill sauce on the chicken was studded with capers and Husband poked one with his fork and asked if I knew what a caper was exactly. I said not really so we asked our waitperson, a solemn young man of twenty-something in a crisp white shirt and black tie. Husband predicted his response would be, “Let me go ask the chef,” and when he answered with those precise words the mimosa I had downed kicked in and I started to giggle.
The Cock and Crow waiter returned to our table with his seriously professional manner and said, “The chef said to tell you capers are the fruit of the caper bush.” Well, that about did me in but I held on long enough to nod intelligently and say to thank the chef for this information. What I was picturing was the chef rolling his eyes at our bourgeois ignorance and snapping to the waiter, “What’s a caper? Tell those assholes it grows on a bush,” and then taking a swig from his bottle of Merlot.
The second the waiter walked away Husband said, “The caper bush? Is that next to the sauerkraut tree?” and I could feel the creme brulee start to work its way up the back of my throat toward my nose. But I deflected it with a gulp of coffee so my $10 dessert didn’t have to reach the table a second time and when we got home I googled capers and son of a gun if the chef wasn’t even jerking us around. It is a bush.
Bossy Street Art is the theme today for Daughter’s Featured Fotos
curb your god, all of you
but feel free to smash something
while you conform and consume
and don’t forget to remember