Our Engage-aversary Celebration

With a little bit of trickery and some fancy string pulling...I was able to get a 6:30 reservation at Mesa Grill for Chris and me on Friday!! I was sooooo excited and glad we wouldn't have to wait around for 3 hours with our name on a list. Chris drove into the city Friday afternoon and picked me up at work. We drove downtown and easily found a parking spot right down the block from the restaurant.

We were seated right away. I got a glass of some Spanish red wine and Chris got his usual captain and coke. For our appetizer we ordered a Spanish Chorizo Quesadilla with fried egg, smoked tomato salsa, grilled green onion and crispy artichokes. I was skeptical about ordering this, but it was my favorite part of the entire meal!

With our meals, we ordered a side of mashed potatos with green chile queso sauce, and roasted corn with grilled cactus, lime and cotija. (Yea..I don't know what half that stuff is either) But let me tell you...that corn was one of the most amazing things I've ever eaten. I wanted to bathe in it...too much?

I ordered Ancho Chile-Honey Glazed Salmon with a Spicy Black Bean sauce, Tomatillo Salsa and Roasted Jalapeno Crema.

Chris ordered Red and black pepper crusted filet mignon with mushroom-Ancho chile sauce.

For dessert we knew exactly what we wanted. We ordered the same thing we had last year for dessert: Churros dusted with cinnamon sugar and star anise with dark chocolate dipping sauce and two scoops of vanilla ice cream:

I realized that we didn't get a picture of us at our table...so I made sure to get one in the car..not the best picture but at least we got one!

We both enjoyed our entrees, but I wouldn't say we were raving about them. Our favorite part of the meal was the appetizer and the sides. This was a great place to go for nostalgic reasons and good food, but I don't know if we'll be rushing back here. There are tons of other places I want to try that I hear are better. We got in the car to go back home just in the nick of time. It started to storm really bad as soon as we started to drive away, and the storm just continued to pick up the more we drove into Queens. The rain was hitting so hard we could hardly see the road in front of us. And, the lightning was lighting up the entire sky. It was actually a really cool storm...I just wish we could have enjoyed it from the comfort of our own home. On the radio, the announcers kept saying to stay indoors and that parts of New York and New Jersey had tornado warnings! What the heck??

We got home in one piece and hung out with our friends Mike and Kerry at our place for a few hours. It was great catching up with them, we definitely don't get to see them as much as we want to. All in all, we had a successful first engage-aversary celebration! (And I guess only because I'm pretty sure people don't celebrate their engage-aversary's every year.)


I leave you with this amazingly beautiful video that I found over at The Wedding Chicks. Her sister's speech is really beautiful and I can't watch this without tearing up.

Joanna + Dan from Picotte Photography on Vimeo.