Regional and more

Next restaurant visit via the Diners Deck was Regional, on the Upper West Side.  It's quite small, so I'm glad I made a reservation beforehand.  Otherwise, GNO + 2 might not have had a table.  But it's always a good sign to enter a busy restaurant.  I'll apologize in advance for not getting more photos.

I arrived a little earlier than the rest of my group, so I sat at the bar and had a drink.  I was hoping to have a glass of the falaghina, but they didn't sell it by the glass, only by the bottle.  So I settled for one of their house cocktails, the limone frizzante, which was limoncello and proseco.  It was, of course, delicious.  Fizzy, lemony and cold.  Perfect for a humid Friday night.

For appetizers, we ordered the carciofi ammuddiacati, a baked artichoke stuffed with olives, capers and smoked mozzarella.  Totally tasty.  We also got the mozzarella di bufala e pomodoro, which was light and fresh and seasonally delectable.  Thumbs up on the appetizers.

We all got different entries, but I only got a photo of my dish.  All my friends loved their dinner:  lasagna, gnocchi, and papardelle.  I got the linguine alla vongole (linguine with clam sauce--I just like to pretend to speak and type in Italian, sorry).

Doesn't that look good?  The cherry tomatoes were roasted, so they were super sweet, and the clams were totally briny and tender.  There was a lot of garlic, too, along with some shallots, so the juice from the tomatoes, the garlic, shallots, and the clam juice made an amazingly amazing sauce.  I would definitely order this again, though I do want to go back and try the fish baked in parchment paper (cartoccio?).

We decided not to have dessert at the restaurant, because we had another plan in mind:  gelato in the street!  :)    Last summer, a group of us got gelato at Grom on the west side and then sat on a bench on an island in the middle of the street.  Very fun and very New York.  So we've been talking about having gelato in the middle of the street ever since.  Although we didn't actually end up in the middle of the street (where did all the benches go?!), we did go to Screme and have yummy gelato.  Though I actually had strawberry sorbet, not wanting to risk too much dairy in my vaguely vegan diet. 

After sorbet, we wandered over to the Thalia Cafe behind Symphony Space to hear (and admire) the fantabulous Robert Locke.  Golly, he was wonderful.  Everyone, please go go go whenever the Robert Locke Trio is playing there.  Funny, urbane, gorgeous and a ridiculously great singer, Robert is an entertainer extraordinare.  I wish I could figure out how to get my video attached.  Sorry.

See?  Told you he was handsome.  So ended the perfect Night Before the Rapture.  A delicious dinner with divine friends. followed by delicious singing.  May there be more evenings like this forever...