He’s been talking about it for years and years, but it finally happened. My uncle is retired! My aunt planned, and well schemed, a surprise retirement party. And it went off beautifully. Snowy weather and flight delays added a few wrinkles to the surprise, but otherwise, he was truly surprised! And of course, there was tons of good food! No one slaved for days on the food. Instead, it was catered! Shrimp cocktail. I love any party with shrimp cocktail!
Asian style mini meatballs. What makes the asian? Because they used sweet chili sauce in it. What an easy and brilliant idea.
Little mini spanakopita in the front. These weren’t that good. The mushroom cups in the back? Good! Actually, great. And this is coming from a girl who doesn’t really like mushrooms.

For a main dish, we had beef tenderloin with a mushroom gravy. This was the best entree of the evening.
Another entree was lemon chicken. I didn’t try this, but I heard this wasn’t that great. So I’m glad that I skipped it. The other entree was a veggie lasagna. A big vat of lasagna isn’t that photogenic. It was fairly tasty though. I would have preferred that the veggies weren’t so crunchy.
Rice pilaf. Not a favorite. Good, but there were chunks of crunchy bits in here.
Grilled veggies. I’m not sure what was in here, but there was definitely carrots, carrots, and carrots. There may have been a sweet potato, but I’m not that sure.
My favorite dish of the entire night was the salad. The mixed greens was nothing special, but it was what what was on top that blew everything out of the water. Candied walnuts, dried cherries, and an amazing balsamic syrup type of dressing. I could have just eaten a giant bowl of this and been stupid happy. This is my dream salad, because it’s like candy! I need to figure out how to make a dressing like that. Because well, I love candy! We also had mocha cake from the korean bakery. And everybody loved it! It was a fabulous party… happy retirement!

Every major city has some sort of restaurant week, and Philadelphia is no exception. It happens several times a year, and enclaves within the city even have their own versions of it. I don’t participate in it too often as the menus can be very limiting and not worth the value. But sometimes, once in awhile, I partake. So for this last go-round, we went to Mercato. I’ve always wanted to go here. It’s a teeny little byob in midtown village that is always packed. And there’s certainly many reasons why.
The place is so small and the tables are densely packed in. You literally have to squeeze yourself into your seat. But it’s not a big deal. Since it was restaurant week, we pretty much got our pick of the menu and got to select one app, one entree, and one dessert.  Only the cioppino was excluded from the menu and the antipasti had to be shared between two as the app. Otherwise, it was all fair game. I appreciated that. Some complimentary bread with a flavored butter. Just wonderful.
M’s roasted portabella and arugula puff pastry with pecorino, pine nuts, and thyme citronette. Delicious!

Whole grilled artichoke with a extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, and a zesty citrus aioli. Again, delicious! And I don’t even like artichokes. It looked so good that I had to try it. Even if I don’t traditionally like artichokes. I’m trying actively to expand my horizons. It was so smoky and great. And we fell in love with this aioli. I could have drank it.
The crispy skin striped bass with caramelized cipollini onions, artichokes and pancetta crisp, in a chianti reduction aioli.  Ooh baby. If I wasn’t such a scallop freak, I would have ordered this. In fact, next time, I will!
So as for me, with very little surprise, I ordered the pan seared diver scallops with a wild mushroom and english pea risotto, parmesan crisp, and drizzled with truffle oil. I’m a sucker for scallops and I’m a sucker for this dish. So perfect. The risotto was creamy and dreamy and super flavorful. I love anything with peas in it! I could have licked the plate. And were it not for all the other patrons within an eyelash of me, I would have.
For dessert I got the panna cotta with cinnamon apples. Loved this too. Loved every damn thing about this place. I can see why this place is packed all the time and gets rave reviews. It deserves all of its lauds. Service was pretty good considering there were only 3 servers for the whole joint and the place was mobbed. It’s cozy but not quiet. Because you’re so tightly packed together it’s busy and loud and bustling. But it’s still adorable. And the food is lovely. I want to taste every dish!

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!