So last night our dart league match was an away game in Dobbs Ferry. In my first match I started out great but blew it when I left my 15’s open and my opponent pounded five of them for points in one turn. He was just as good on the corks and I was toast. Since my next match wasn’t going to be for a while I stepped out for some air. Looking across the street I saw a pretty elegant looking restaurant called Mimosa so I decided to walk over and scope out their menu. A few things immediately jumped out at me- escargot, carpaccio, ostrich and wild boar. Ok, this was my kind of menu! I looked at the time- 8:45. Hrmmmm…

I went back to the bar and watched the games until my next match which was about 40 minutes later. It was a doubles match this time, and I had Hector as my partner. He was not throwing particularly well by his standards, but we ham and egged it as I suddenly caught fire and started hitting my trips. We got down to bulls in a heartbeat and Hector got a double cork right off the bat and then I followed with the same to close it out. Nice to get the win, but even better that we closed it out quickly because all I could think about was the escargot across the street…

I headed back over to Mimosa and entered the restaurant into the busy bar area where a distinctly older crowd had gathered to watch the election coverage on the tv above the bar. I felt a little out of place since I was in cargo pants and a Nike t-shirt, but whatever. Making my way to the bar I asked the guy who appeared to be the manager what time their kitchen closes. Whew, I had just made it by 15 minutes! I asked for some food to go- the escargot, the carpaccio and the risotto funghi (risotto with mushrooms and truffle oil). He said it would be ready in about 15 minutes. I told him I was in the middle of a dart match across the street so I’d be back to get it sometime before 10:30. He asked if my match was at Doubledays or Celtic Corner, and I thought it was cool that the manager of this elegant place knew which places were in the dart league.

I returned to Doubledays for a few beers and when I saw my next match wouldn’t be for a while, I went back to Mimosa to pick up my food. The manager guy, John, said it wasn’t ready yet since the risotto takes a while to cook, so he graciously offered to send it over to the bar when it was done. I politely declined and told him I was ok with waiting since it was so nice in there and I was perfectly happy hanging out and watching the election coverage. I told him that based upon the food I had ordered he probably already knew I was happier to be there than in the bar across the street, and he agreed that yeah, most local bar-hoppers don’t usually order carpaccio and escargot. He asked if I wanted a drink while I waited and I said no because I had a beer waiting for me back at Doubledays. But another 10 minutes passed and the food still wasn’t ready, so John asked what kind of beer I had waiting for me across the street. It was Heineken Light of course, and so he opened one for me, on the house. I was starting to like this place more and more! It was enjoyable drinking my free beer and chatting with the older folks there and watching Jeanine Pirro give her concession speech. Finally my food came out and John told me he threw in a free dessert too. Sweet. In New Orleans, that’s what you’d call lagniappe. 🙂

I lost my final doubles match because we couldn’t double out, but no matter, I had some good food to look forward to when I got home. I made it home in time for the last half hour of the combined Daily Show/Colbert Report election day special and unpacked my food. I killed off the carpaccio first which was a good dish with nice slices of beef with the perfect color, flavor and texture for carpaccio, all topped with a nice salad and shards of cheese. Tasty. Next up was the escargot which were shelled, and unusually paired with fresh peas. This dish was a little disappointing as it was just ok, but nothing spectacular. A simpler butter garlic sauce would have been better, but hey, I hadn’t been able to have escargot in months, so I’m not complaining. Then I was onto the risotto. This was a real treat. Perfectly cooked, which is a rare thing. Visually you could still see the opaque center of each grain leading you to think it may be underdone, but as you took a bite there was absolutely no hard grains at all, just the perfect amount of soft resistance to the tooth without being mush. Flavorwise it wasn’t overwhelmed with the scent of truffle which gave the mushrooms more of a chance to express themselves. What a nice execution of risotto. I only finished about a third of it since it was so late and because I wanted to try a taste of the free dessert too. That dessert was a four-layer creation that looked like a cake but was more like a free-standing parfait. It featured a base layer of deep dark chocolate cake so rich it was almost a fudge, a slightly lighter chocolate layer, and then two lighter layers, the top one being white. Only the bottom layer was what you’d think of as cake, and the othery layers were too dense to be considered parfait, so I’m not exactly sure what you’d call it, but it certainly was good. But I only ate half of it so that I could save the rest of it for whenever I decide to have my leftover risotto. Yummm… this is the way I wish I could eat on every league night!