An anniversary dinner out at Stillwell’s, which is one of those rooms that always feels like the right call in late October when the nights are getting cold and you want a tablecloth under your plate.
Bread arrived almost before we’d sat down - a round pull-apart loaf the color of toffee, studded with bacon and cheese, enough for a family of six if the family was restrained, which we were not.
Two cocktails to start: a whiskey on the rocks and something pale and effervescent with a fan of tuile balanced across the rim. I took a picture of the second one because the light was catching the paper-thin garnish in a way that made it look like a sail.
Appetizers we shared: a plate of deviled eggs with piped yolk and a drizzle of something dark, a small dish of lobster risotto, a caesar with frico crisps. Soup after that - a carrot bisque, coral-colored, with a jet-black parmesan crisp floating across the top that made the whole thing feel a little theatrical.
Then the plates. A bone-in ribeye with two small cups of sauce - a mustardy béarnaise and a dark bordelaise - arranged like tiny buckets. And a filet under a tumble of lump crab and hollandaise, which is the kind of thing I would never make at home because I would never assemble that much butter in my own kitchen. Sometimes I have to be in a restaurant to accept it.
Three sides to share: bacon mac, creamy mashed with chives, sautéed mushrooms. The mac was the one we kept going back to. The mashed were great. The mushrooms mostly stayed in the pan.
Cold air on the way back, a full stomach, streetlights. A perfect October night to toast a year.
