Monday, July 5, 2010

How About A Little Tongue?: Dinner and a Movie

Hello. My name is Amanda, and I'm a twi-hard.

And I'm food obsessed.

Mixing the two is what I imagine being on ecstasy is like.

Before going to the midnight opening of the Twilight Saga: Eclipse with my sis-in-law Suz and my husband FD, we had an exquisite dinner at Revolver in Findlay.

Dare I say, I enjoyed dindin more than the movie...

While Taj Mahal played in the background, Suz, FD, and I approached dinner from a family-style perspective; we shared all of our first courses and even our entrees.

Though it might be a HUGE stretch to think that our first courses were in any way linked to Eclipse, I somehow concocted a story to connect the two. We started our meal with Pickled Cow's Tongue with roasted beets and a soft boiled farm egg; Crispy Bone Marrow with shiitake mushrooms, braised beef, rhubarb, and star anise; and Local Porkbelly with potato galette, spring peas and curry.

The Cow's Tongue was divine. Imagine a flavor and texture combination of flank steak meets chuck roast. The beets gave it some moisture and the egg complimented the pickling. Eclipse has a lot of kissy moments in it, including the first not-so-romantic kiss between Bella and Jacob, which was a bit "offal"; therefore, the tongue was appropriate.

The Crispy Bone Marrow was juicy and salty with a bit of heat--much like the shirtless Jacob. (Wink, wink.)

The Local Porkbelly was smoky, chewy, and surprisingly light. It definitely represented the Cullens' fighting abilities. (Okay, that's a HUGE stretch.)

Seriously, we had a blast catching up and sharing family stories throughout the courses of our dinner as well as building the anticipation of the movie and the lines to get into the theater.

For my entree, I had Dickman Farms Chicken Breast with heirloom lima beans and black kale. My craving for kale is what drew me to this dish, and it did not disappoint. The tenderness of the chicken, lima beans, and kale worked beautifully together, especially with the slight hint of vinegar.

Suz and FD shared the pork sauerbraten for two with butter poached potatoes. Both are sauerbraten fans because their mum STR made it a lot from them when they were kids. Both really like Michael Bulkowski's stripped down version with a sauerbraten reduction drizzled over a pork tenderloin. The component that made the dish, though, was the butter poached potatoes. If crack potatoes hadn't already been coined, that's what they would be. The fingerlings were perfectly buttered and salted that they could have been mashed potatoes if I was blindfolded.

Quite frankly, even though I am obsessed with Twilight, I don't think the movie could have ever compared to our dinner. Which must mean I'm way more obsessed with food.

We saw Eclipse at the Carmike Theater in Findlay where it was showing on all 12 screens. You can only imagine the lines and the pre-teen mayhem. Unlike my experience of the New Moon midnight showing in Bowling Green who made several in-person announcements to our showing, the manager of Carmike did NOT ensure that there was NO saving of seats, outside food, or recording of the movie on digital devices. Basically, the manager of Carmike was NO WHERE TO BE SEEN. In other words, it was a cluster-mess of an event where every theater had rows of saved seats, aisles were littered with baggies of chips and gummy bears, and pubescent girls recorded all the "hot" scenes on their phones. I vow if I ever go to a midnight screening again, it will be in BG--no matter how geeky I have to feel by checking Fandango every hour to see when tickets can be purchased.

But even after all that frustration and the disappointment I felt with the movie's pacing as a whole, with the lingering of slow scenes, and the sometimes tacky acting, what made the evening so awesome were the fight scenes, the tent scene, the company of two of my favorite people, and the memory of another fantastic celebratory meal at Revolver.

Meal: 5 out of 5 stars
Movie: 3 out of 5 stars

1 comment:

  1. You crack my shit up, dude. Watched the movie today. There were parts where I was thinking (almost out loud), "suspend the disbelief."
    But I did like the movie and if there is another, I will go see it.

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