I met up with a couple of my west coast colleagues for a dinner at Gaucho Grill on the Promenade. I think it’s supposed to be an Argentinian restaurant? The place was practically empty, which didn’t seem to be the best sign. The place is fairly large and attractively decorated.J ordered an appetizer. It looks like an empanada, but I totally forget what it was. But I do remember it being good.
She also ordered the salmon entree. It was grilled with a sweet cherry tomato sauce and served with spinach and rice. She liked this very much.
To continue on the salmon slant, S ordered the grilled salmon salad. It was a huge portion served with a garlic vinaigrette. She liked this, but felt that the greens got soggy too quickly with the hot salmon and other warm ingredients being heaped on it.As for me, I was the lone non-salmon person, ordering the cuban chicken paillar. It was basically a giant flattened chicken breast with grilled onions. Simple yet tasty. I really loved the rice as well. The beans were ok. Overall, good food and good company. I’m not sure why this place was so deserted. It wasn’t great, but it was perfectly good, affordable, and had good service.

On election night, we headed up Main Street to the Library Alehouse in Santa Monica. It has a bar with dining up front, and a back patio area for more outdoor dining. After watching election coverage all day long, I didn’t want to take a break, but in order to be seated right away, we went in the patio. It’s a lovely little space out there. Outdoors, but with coverage, and actually quite lovely. J got the fish tacos with mango salsa. He liked these very much. We also got complimentary chips and salsa, and we totally pounded those. The salsa had a slight kick. And we started noticing that around here, most places give out fairly spicy salsa. I had been craving pasta, so I got the pumpkin ravioli with a sage sauce. It was strange, like pumpkin pie in little pockets of dough, but I liked it very much. The sauce was creamy yet very light. It was just what I wanted. Service was great. Towards the end of the meal, when it go to 8 o’clock, we heard some cheering coming from the bar. We had a new president! But darn it, I was kinda bummed that after all that tv watching throughout the day, we missed the whole electoral vote going over 270 thing. Damn you timing!

Oh, and the Library Alehouse is actually an alehouse, so they have a bunch of beers on tap. We didn’t drink there, but I was cold so we hopped to the Coffee Bean next door and got me a hot chocolate. The girls there were so excited about the election that they gave it to me for a dollar off. That was the tastiest, cheapest, and election-tastic hot chocolate I’d ever had.