the gang

I have a new gang that I've been rolling with since arriving in Cleveland. "The gang" consists of Mr. Moc (of course), Shaggy, Island Girl, SBD (Silent but Deadly) and Social Butterfly. We have dinner together on Friday nights. Our first Friday night dinner was at Fat Cats in Tremont. Someone suggested this restaurant to Shaggy so we decided to try it out for our first dinner together.

The restaurant was very homey - long and narrow in shape and reminded me of a San Francisco restaurant. You can walk past the kitchen and see the chef cooking up your dinner. It had a casual atmosphere with very attentive wait staff. The food was delicious. I had the flat-iron steak with a cherry tomato salad (sorry to all you foodies, it was 2 weeks ago so I can't remember all the details). After dinner, Mr. Moc and I shared a chocolate cake which was slightly undercooked on the inside so that it was very rich and moist. Shaggy wanted to take our dessert away from us because he loves chocolate.

Our second Friday night dinner was at Primo Vino in Little Italy. Social Butterfly was a bartender at this restaurant for 5 years before he went to Michigan for his residency. Thanks to SB, we got the hookup. We met SB at the restaurant and a huge appetizer plate was placed on the table. There was roasted red peppers, olives, caprese, fresh figs (very sweet) and prosciutto, fava beans, white beans with spinach, cheese and salami rolls, and garlic cheese toast. There was also a hot appetizer - stuffed banana peppers with marinara sauce (this was my favorite).

The cold appetizer plate was so filling that we ordered 3 entrees and a cheese fondue to share among the 6 of us. The entrees were decent but nothing spectacular so I'll skip over this section. However for dessert, we had this fresh figs in port reduction sauce with mascarpone cheese. Yum!

In addition to Friday night dinners, the Gang comes over to our place to hang out. We've had 2 such get-togethers at our place since the beginning of the month which I'll blog about another time. --MM