Déjà-vu, ou plutôt ... entendu (take two)

This is "take two" because an unfortunate occurrence with Wave caused me to lose my first post. But hopefully this one is even better, though no one will ever know ...

Friday, January 8, Evan, Jenn and I dropped Andrew off at Mom's around 6pm and then headed out to our dinner reservation at Whispering Pines, one of Norman's finest dining establishments. Evan and Jenn had been there before and the waiter remembered them from previous dining experiences. They thought I would enjoy the Continental cuisine which is quite a bit more elegant than your everyday BJs or Chipotle fare!

When we arrived at Whispering Pines, a few minutes early for our six-thirty reservation, there was only one other occupied table, a couple in their late fifties/early sixties were already in the middle of their meal. The waiter showed us to a table in the opposite corner of the room from theirs and we got settled in and started perusing the menus and debating drink options. After only a few minutes, the man at the other table started addressing us, every now and then, in a booming voice from across the room. At first he was satisfied making banal comments about the food and the weather, but eventually he felt bold enough to move on to questions. In this way we learned that the salmon special was quite good, that the couple lived out in Blanchard, which is west of Norman but a different town, and that the man had been to Alaska. In the meanwhile, we had ordered drinks, and an appetizer and then moved on to our main courses. The couple got up to leave, paid, and were putting on their coats. The three of us were oohing and aahing over our delicious dinners and chatting about various family stories when out of the corner of my eye I noticed the man approaching me. He stopped about a yard away, looked at me and said, "I am curious." Now, those of you familiar with Trombleganza lore will realize why this took me by surprise! I looked at the man, my eyes wide and my mouth slightly opened and took a few minutes to collect myself and realize that he had continued speaking. It turned out he was curious about how I came to be living in France after having grown up in Alaska. I eventually got it together, answered him politely and his wife was finally able to drag him away. Then I turned back to Evan and Jenn and commented on how strange it had been to hear Grandpa's words coming out of this stranger's mouth!

The Whispering Pines dining experience was delightful! Evan had a sex-on-the-beach and Jenn and I ordered a bottle of California Zinfandel (recommended by the waiter) to have a glass before dinner and the rest with. It was a hearty full-bodied peppery red wine, quite to my liking. Unfortunately I don't remember the name of the winery it was from. We decided to all share a smoked salmon appetizer. As we were waiting for it to come out, Evan commented that he hoped it wouldn't be lox. When it came out, it was lox! But I convinced him to try it, arguing that this was better quality lox than what you would generally get at the Silverbow, for example. He tried it, and found it edible! The appetizer was artistically arranged on the plate to look like a flower. The salmon was folded up into roses, cream cheese was squeezed out to make the stems and there were little piles of onions, tomatoes, capers, grated egg white and egg yolk to put on our pieces of toast with the salmon. For the main course, I chose the salmon special (salmon with cream cheese and spinach baked in a puff pastry with a creamy champagne sauce), Evan got the duck with a blackcurrant liqueur sauce and Jenn decided on a piece of beef labeled "filet mignon" (Sylvain and I are confused about this because in French "filet mignon" can only be pork ...) with a cognac and green peppercorn sauce. I put my vegetarian tendencies aside just long enough to sample a bit of each of theirs. Delicious! The meats were all cooked to perfection. The accompaniment was the same for all of us: a potato rose, carrots, asparagus and squash and something else that I didn't eat because I was full and so don't really know what it was. For dessert, we decided to share a piece of flourless chocolate cake with raspberry coulis. One-third of the chocolate dessert was just right. Something sugary to finish off the meal, but not too overwhelming. A whole dessert would have been torture!

Our waiter was very friendly and very helpful. He promised to give me a Fat Bastard hippo wine glass next time Evan and Jenn or I came back (I had asked if I could buy one, but he didn't have any to spare at the time) and I promised to return at some point with my French husband. We all signed up to be Facebook friends with Whispering Pines. There was a wine "game" set up on the mantel, but we decided not to "play". There were six different California cabernet sauvignons. Two had stickers on the bottoms. If you were lucky enough to choose one with a sticker, you could get it for half price (not a bad deal for thirty to sixty dollar bottles). I might have been tempted, except I'm generally not that big on cab savs, although these were better than your average bottles, I think. Oh well, we passed. Before we left, however, I selected one ... turns out it wasn't one of the stickered ones so I wouldn't have won anyway!

If you enjoy relatively inexpensive fine cuisine in an elegant yet unpretentious, relaxing environment, next time you're in Norman, get Evan and Jennifer to show you the way to Whispering Pines. I'm planning on going back myself some day.