Alysia & Stephen visit. . .
Hello all, I figured it had been about a million make
believe years (2 years in real time) since I wrote an entry for Bo and
Chicken’s blog so when Stephen told me he was elected Treasurer of the Graduate
Student Association I first said “So, what I work at a BANK and WE deal with
MONEY all day every day!”
After a confused staring contest Stephen said
“….Anyway I was thinking we should go out and celebrate!” to which my mind
registered “CHA CHING FOOOOOOOOD!!!”
Now Stephen and I don’t get out all that often, but we do
try to go out once a month to a nice place for what we like to call “date
night”, but should probably be called “go to a place with big portions so we
can stuff ourselves silly and still have leftovers for lunch tomorrow”.
Anyway, we got all gussied up and decided to try a new place
called Gradkowski’s since one of Stephen’s Professor’s recommended it. My
initial thought on the name was “We’re going to Gradkowski’s and you’re a
GRADuate student!” (A real knee slapper I know, I’ll keep the laughs coming!)
After my tomfoolery was over Stephen explained that Bruce Gradkowski was a
Quarterback for the University of Toledo and is currently in the NFL and just
got drafted by the Steelers. (Thus ends the extent of my NFL knowledge).
Gradkowski’s is located pretty much on the University of
Toledo’s Campus in a newly built strip mall-ish area. There was ample parking to
be had and I managed to make it to the front door of the restaurant without
tripping on my heels (I saved that for INSIDE the restaurant, so I had an audience).
We had been wise enough to call ahead and make reservations
and after we had been seated I was glad we did! The place wasn’t very full when
we got there, but it soon filled up completely! We had a great waitress that
didn’t even bat an eye when I asked for a glass of water and a glass of soda. They do serve every drink
with 2 small straws so I was double fisting with double barrels! (Insert laugh
track here.)
The menu here isn’t large by any means, but it does offer a
good amount of selections.
We decided to splurge and get an appetizer of Pesto
fries.
They came out very quickly and were delicious!
(Pictured above, my stomach was
faster
than my hand to reach for the camera,
hence the partially eaten plate)
There were a couple of dishes on the menu that involved
Pesto so it was easy to eliminate them as choices since we didn’t want to get
pestoed out. (Fun Fact: Urban Dictionary defines Pestoed as smashing something
in a brute sexual manner). [Memo to self: do note site Urban Dictionary as a
source for a fine dining review].
After we had snacked away on the delicious pesto fries we
finally made our minds up for dinner. Stephen selected the Parmesan Encrusted
Salmon. (So classy!)
And I selected the Seafood Sicilian. (Not Pictured is
me triumphantly thrusting my fists in the air for not only selecting a classier
sounding dish, but a cheaper one at that!)
It’s gotta be classy…it has capers in it!
Of course we bypassed
ordering the $20 burger that was on the menu and included foie gras and a fried
quail egg on top of it amongst other ingredients that were too classy* for this
couple (*by too classy I mean too expensive and it had mustard on it and I DO
NOT do mustard, no matter how fancy it is).
Poo
on YOU Grey Poupon!
While we waited for our food
we enjoyed the ambiance of the restaurant. There were several flat screen TV’s
broadcasting the latest on the Final 4 and décor was very tasteful. It was
almost a mix between old and new Italian. The only thing that was weird was the
20 era’s music that was playing.
How can
you listen to that type of music and not picture people dancing like this??
We received about 15/20
minutes after ordering and it was still steaming hot when it came to the table.
They say we eat with our eyes, and my eyes were thoroughly nourished!
Iron Chef America
judges might critique this plate for the butter ball being slightly askew, I consider
it a very delicious and artery clogging form of
avant garde art.
Ring, Ring!
Hello eyeballs? You’re welcome!
Dinner
was a heavenly feast. I didn’t realize the pasta was going to have some heat
but it was a delicious surprise! (P.S. DO NOT DIRECTLY BITE INTO A CAPER just
so you can “see what one tastes like” they were not made for that!'
The portions
might not look very big from these pictures or we underestimated how many fries
we actually ate, but we did end up with leftovers from our meal.
One
of my favorite things about this restaurant is that they box up the leftovers
for you and bag them up. They even marked the containers with the date. One
more thing about these containers, they are dishwasher safe and microwave safe,
seriously they are the nicest take out containers I’ve ever had. I actually
washed mine out and plan to re-use it they are THAT GOOD!
We would definitely visit Gradkowski’s again in the future!
It’s not an everyday place to eat since our entire meal was about $50 for the
two of us, but it offered us a pleasant night out with a great atmosphere,
wonderful food and we got to steal glances at Bruce Gradkowski himself!
All in
all a great place to visit and the staff couldn’t have been friendlier (well
they could have, but then it would have been borderline creepy). For sure stop
by and check this place out and make sure you save some food to take home so
you can use the wonderful containers. (I should be a spokesperson for these
things seriously!)
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