Thursday, December 12, 2013

#24 Melograno

With the holidays right around the corner, Brendan and I were looking for an inexpensive date night (aka, gift card & byob). We decided to go to  Melograno, an Italian BYOB on 20th and Sansom, fairly close to his apartment.  We made these plans at about noon on the day of, pretty typical. Can't get Brendan to plan anything in advance. However it was pretty easy to make a reservation for 8:30 on the night of, which surprised me.

So, as the day goes on, it begins to pour. And then it doesn't stop. All. Night. The last thing that we wanted to do was trek out in the rain but, Friday night is date night and that is what you do. Luckily we got a cab immediately as we walked out of his house, which doesn't happen often. During this cab ride we discovered  that I cannot for the life of me say 'Sansom' correctly. It usually comes out 'Samson', 'Sanson', 'Samsom' or some other variation.

We arrived at Melograno about 15 minutes early and they were able to seat us right away. Now, you all know how much of a stickler I am with wait staff, so when this waiter came to our table to open our wine without introducing himself or asking how we were and avoided any attempt to create small talk, I wasn't pleased. Crickets as he was opening our wine. Like, hello, anybody there? Then, he left us for about 20 minutes. I mean the place was full, but come on! This was how much I had left in my first glass before we ordered:


When he finally came to our table to order he just stood there looking at us, waiting for us to speak. After more awkward silence we ordered our meal. This guy. Anyways, I will cease my rant about the waiter and talk about our food. Before I begin, I would like to apologize for my picture quality. Melograno was dark and my boyfriend gets embarrassed when I use my flash.

To start, Brendan ordered calamari (which, by the way, has been a central theme of 52 First Meals- maybe I should write a sister blog called '30 First Calamari Dishes'). His calamari came with cannellini beans, diced tomato & lemon over baby spinach. The calamari was not fried, so I kept mistaking the beans for squid. It was good though. I ordered the Prosciutto di Parma e Rucola salad which was arugula, prosciutto & shaved parmigiano with lemon vinaigrette dressing. I enjoyed this dish, it was light enough to leave me hungry for dinner.





Now on to the main dishes. Brendan got the Pappardelle Al Ragu di Cinghiale (braised wild boar ragu) & I got the Ravioli di Patate (sweet potato & leek ravioli, brown butter sage sauce). I liked my raviolis but ordered the dish solely based on the sweet potato and brown butter sage and those flavors weren't really coming through for me. The entrees were fine. Just fine. Nothing really special about them, but coupled with the wait staff, we weren't overly thrilled with Melograno. No wonder it was so easy to get a Friday night reservation!


 

I am not going to say that I won't go back to Melograno because it is a super convenient BYOB, but there are way more quality BYOs in the city that excite me much more than Melograno did. Thankfully, the night was not over yet - on to gift card #25 ;-)


No comments:

Post a Comment