🚀 go-pugleaf

Took the missus to Addie's on Tuesday last to celebrate our anniversary 
in a little higher fashion than usual, so I thought I'd report on our 
experience.

We started with the mixed greens salad with pine nuts, golden raisins, a 
couple of thin blood orange slices, garnished with two fried artichoke 
halves. The baby artichokes were wonderful - crunchy exterior 
counterbalanced by a slightly tart and tender interior. Unfortunately, 
the salads were over dressed and the garnish ingredients weren't really 
in good balance (e.g. my salad had far too many raisins in it).

For entrees, I chose the applewood smoked divers scallops over a white 
bean and tomato stew and my wife had the grilled tuna with a mushroom 
and potato grill.

The scallops were wonderfully fresh and perfectly done, but I could 
hardly detect any smoke flavor at all. The bean-and-tomato stew was 
similarly under-flavored,  with the result that the overall effect of 
the dish was quite bland and undistinguished.

We finished the meal with desserts: banana bread pudding for the wife 
and a blackberry jam dessert du jour (can't recall what the server 
called it) for me. The bread pudding arrived with vanilla ice cream and 
very nicely glazed banana slices but the pudding itself had very little 
banana flavor. My dessert consisted of an thick layer of chunky but  
extremely sweet marmalade made from mostly blackberries with a few 
blueberries, layered on a rather tough piece of puff pastry (that didn't 
puff) and garnished with a few (very sweet) candied orange peel strips. 
While the flavors were great together, the overwhelming effect was SWEET.

One redeeming feature was the wine we selected: we each had a glass of  
lovely, slightly fizzy Aveleda Vinho Verde, which was just right with 
the entrees we had chosen. Although it was one of the least expensive 
wines on the by-the-glass lise ($7) it is, like most restaurant wines, 
pretty seriously marked up in price, considering you can get the whole 
bottle locally for $5. Still, a very pleasant accompaniment to the meals.

In summary, a less than excellent experience that had hints of promise. 
My impression was that the chef had created some great dishes but that 
the cooks weren't quite up to fully realizing them. Would I return? 
Perhaps, but another experience like this one will probably be my last 
at Addie's, especially since the tab for the two of us was right at $150.