Tonight wasn’t the usual Friday night dinner in Bloomington; this week, we had something special to celebrate – our full-time job offers (and acceptances)!! It didn’t start out with that intent, but the place Ang suggested was Sweet Grass, which is a little fancier and more expensive than our usual Friday night choices.
We actually started celebrating last night at Kilroy’s on Kirkwood, where the two of us and our friend took shots to the Big 4 (except we renamed it the Big 3) since the three of us will be working for different Big 4 accounting firms. So, the car ride to the restaurant started with us reminiscing about the night and how, at the very least, I am not ready to leave college.
Anyway, Sweet Grass isn’t in the typical “restaurant district” of Bloomington – it’s actually even further south than 1st street, an area that I have never ventured to before. It’s a nice building, but we were both kind of confused when we walked in...it’s a huge space but isn’t filled with many tables, and the kitchen is exposed but has IU and other flags hanging above it, which totally don’t fit with the Southern theme of the restaurant. On the bright side, we were only the second table to be seated (we went really early) and they served us right away. We had already looked at the menu earlier in the day (http://www.sweetgrassbloomington.com/) and there were a number of dishes that looked good. I ended up going with one of the ones that had caught my eye earlier (Vegetable Ziti with shrimp) but Angie opted for one of the specials, whose main attraction was scallops. And, not forgetting tradition, we did have some wine – me a Zinfandel (Cline, I think?) and the Pinot Grigio for her. My food was delicious. Hands down, the best ziti I’ve ever had. I think Angie really enjoyed her scallops too because she kept talking about them later. Somehow we managed to save room for dessert and I had the richest carrot cake I’ve ever had – and it’s justifiable because it has vegetables in it, right? Angie rolled her eyes at me when I said that, haha. She got this insanely decadent chocolate cake with like three layers of different types of chocolate on it. It looked yummy but it also made my stomach hurt because I don’t handle chocolate well in large quantities.
Overall it was a fun dinner, an exciting thing to celebrate, but it does make me sad to know that we’ll be leaving Bloomington and heading to different cities – New York for her and Chicago for me. I guess that just means we’ll have to visit one another and keep writing about all the new food places we try!
