Modo Mio is a beloved BYOB in fishtown. I don’t really know anyone who hasn’t liked the place. It’s been open for a few years, and I have no idea why I waited so long to go. It was worth all the hype. [Apologies in advance for the worse than usual photos, but the lighting in there is terrible for non-flash photos!]

Since it was a BYOB, M made us some pre-dinner gin cocktails. We b’d plenty of our own b’s. We even offered a drink to one of the waitresses, but she refused! We all decided to do the turista menu, which allows you to pick anything from the antipasti, pasta, secondi, and dessert menus.

The bread was unbelievable. It’s served with a porcini olio, which was also beyond delicious. The bread is incredibly dense and wet and chewy on the inside. Things were starting off well.

Before the food started coming out, we got a little amuse bouche, which was a bruschetta with tuna puree. The bread was a bit too salty on the crust, but overall, it was a great little taste.

For the antipasti, a few of us got the cervello, the fried calves’ brains with walnuts and pickled fennel. Who knew fried brains would be so good?

I ordered the Polpo, the balsamic grilled octopus, crispy potato cake, with arugula pesto. Wow. Just wow. The octopus was tender and delicious, and the crispy potato cake, although not crispy, was so surprisingly good. People are afraid that octopus could possibly be rubbery. This octopus was the furthest from rubbery as anything possibly could be.

For the pasta, M got the Caramelli, fresh pasta candies (look how cute they are!) stuffed with buffalo milk Taleggio and hazelnut brown butter. The cheese was super creamy and delicious in here. So rich!

R and I both picked the Mlinzi, toasted fresh pasta with a rustic rabbit ragu. So good! The pasta was extremely firm, I guess that comes from the toasting. The ragu was made with sweet peppers so it had a surprising sweetness.

F’s lamb dish, the Agnello. It’s typically a braised lamb chops dish, but this night, it was a giant lamb ball, served with porcini and apple fritters.

Three of us got the Guancè, the veal cheek served chef’s choice style. The menu says “trust him”. It’s a good idea to do so. Delicious! Again, this is a bit on the sweet side. I think E would have preferred that it was less sweet. The cheek itself was nice and tender.

I was in the mood for something on the lighter side for my entree, so I went with a fish dish and picked the Razze, seared skate wing with apricot brown butter, almonds, capers, and lemon. It was exactly what I wanted! The fish was perfectly cooked and the whole dish was light. I don’t like capers so I ate around them, but I loved everything else. The apricot chunks were a really nice touch.

For desserts, the options included tiramisu, a flourless chocolate something, an italian style crepe with nutella, and I forget what else. A few went with just cappuccino or espresso. Because I’m into fruits in my desserts, I got the apple pastry. It was somewhat like an apple pie, but one that had shavings of cheese on top. It was nice and light and a perfect way to end this meal. Really, the entire meal and experience exceeded all of my expectations. The service was also good, provided by our very actorly waiter, Steve. The place is small, and you’re all definitely squeezed in. It’s also quite loud, so don’t expect a quiet and serene place that is romantic. It’s boisterous! But the food is some of the best I’ve ever had. I implore everyone to visit! I’ll definitely be back!

With Restaurant Week going on, there were several other restaurants that were having special deals. One of these happened to be London Grill. To thank frequent diners, they offered a special $18.95 Meal Deal of fresh maine lobster or filet of beef. This seemed like such a deal! Lobster or Filet for $18.95? Well, it didn’t quite live up to what they made it out to be.

I had gotten an email announcing the deal and it promised fresh maine lobster or filet of beef. When we got there, the little menu card now said fresh maine half lobster or filet of beef. That was fallacy number one. Well fine, we decided to go for it anyway. It mentioned nothing about how it was prepared, but we envisioned half a lobster sitting on a plate with some veggies. Well, first we got some complimentary mushrooms and bread. For someone who’s not that into mushrooms, these were surprisingly tasty! And the bread was a focaccia, also tasty. We got a house salad, which was just fine. No choice of dressing or anything, you just get what they give you. R wanted a caesar salad and they brought her out a caesar one, without any additional charge. That was pretty cool of them.

When we got the fresh maine half lobster, we actually got a bowl with whole wheat spaghetti, topped with a lobster claw, with some additional lobster meat thrown into it. Not at all what we expected. It tasted fine, but we didn’t expect a spaghetti dinner. We expected a lobster dinner. The spaghetti was also extremely garlicky and slightly spicy, which I didn’t mind, but others may. I don’t know about you, but when I envision lobster dinner, a bowl of spaghetti ain’t it.

For dessert, it was chocolate mousse. For someone who’s not all that into chocolate or mousse, I still liked this a lot. So kudos on the chocolate mousse. But no kudos for the fact that I came here to get a particular drink and they didn’t have the beer it that was required to make it. If you put a drink on the menu, then make sure you have all the components with which to make it. 99% of the reasons I even went to London Grill was to get this drink, and they didn’t even have it. Fallacy number 2.

The service… oh, the service. Our server tried, she really did, but she just wasn’t very good. She wasn’t good at explaining, she wasn’t good at imparting information, she just wasn’t very good at being a server. I suggest she look into another line of work.

At the end of the day, the meal was fine, and for getting three courses, it is a deal, but it’s not one that I could recommend. They don’t quite tell you what the deal is, and that’s how they sucker you in. They promise lobster and give you mostly lobster bits. So I’m going to have to say skip it!

I headed up to the far burbs for the first dinner party of 2010 at N’s house. There are 5 cats in that house, most are unfriendly. There’s a lot of N’s art all around the house. Naturally, as she’s an artist. What’s a dinner party without cheese and crackers? And grapes! I ate an unfairly large share of these grapes.

There was tons to eat. Bread, with butter and nutella! Little tiny crab cakes with a remoulade. A made those. Some little phyllo dough puff things filled with spinach.

Garlic broccoli, and some random flatbread type of stuff.

Rice and some dip for the flatbread!

There was even a warming tray to keep the food hot! Hello chicken marsala! Hello veggies! And hello veggie ravioli! A made the ravioli too. It was all freakin delicious. I loved all the red and white dishes too, they were adorably old school.

For dessert, a ginormous fruit tart! It wasn’t much of a tart, it ended up being pretty much just a cake with fruit on top, but it was still quite tasty. We ended up trying to play this game, Quelf, later on in the evening, but it wasn’t so easy. There were too many people and too many of them were drunk, so game playing proved quite difficult. But we’ll have to give it a shot another time. Thanks N for the lovely party!