Day 1 - Noriega's

The Basque cuisine and family dining style of Noriega's was today's new experience but I had no idea how much of an experience it would prove to be! In addition to eating more boiled cabbage in one sitting than I ever have in my life (although Mark says it was good boiled cabbage as opposed to the kind of boiled cabbage that makes you never want to eat boiled cabbage again...I actually wasn't aware there were two different kinds), today, for the first time, I was also spoon fed ice cream by an intoxicated senior citizen. Yep, how many of you can say that, huh? It seems it was his birthday as well and wow didn't we have "so much in common!" The author Louise Beal said "Love thy neighbor as thyself, but choose thy neighbor." I think the same principle can be applied to table mates. I think that possibly there is a reason that dining out has evolved to separate tables with table mates of one's choosing as opposed to the family style dining arrangement we experienced today. Sam told me I handled the situation well. My typical reasoning for everything; I figured what's the worst that could happen, I end up wearing vanilla ice cream. As it turned out I didn't end up wearing vanilla ice cream and had said intoxicated senior sing "happy birthday you old fart" to me; truly a cherished moment. Somehow I think I will remember this birthday. I had to kind of laugh though because my ice cream feeding old codger asked me what year I was born and when I began evasive maneuvers he said 1967. Well that's one way to get me to 'fes up to my real age.

When I was first researching Basque restaurants in Bakersfield I thought the idea of unlimited red wine was phenomenal and why didn't all restaurants do this. I'm not reneging this opinion I'm simply revising it. Unlimited red wine at lunch is only a good idea in the evolved form of dining out but not such a good idea when your fellow red wine drinkers are strangers over the age of 60 and single. Just something to keep in mind.

All joking about cabbage consumption aside the fare for vegetarians was minimal to say the least. Okay, okay, I knew that going in and had already reconciled that today would need to be one of those not so vegetarian days. We were served Cornish game hen, (and if someone can tell me the difference between Cornish game hen and chicken I'm listening) which I ate and it was okay...nothing to make me miss meat over but not bad. I couldn't do the corned beef. I know I have almost no principles as a vegetarian but I do have a hard time with beef (unless it's in hamburger form and even that usually requires some level of drinking the night before, like the time I tried match Travis tequila for tequila, I think the day after was the last time I had a hamburger). From start to finish we had Cabbage soup, Salad (which never made it down to us so I didn't have salad but it was on the table), French Bread, Corned Beef and Cabbage (with potatoes and carrots) chicken disguised as Cornish game hen (or possible Cornish game hen disguised as chicken, not sure which), and blue cheese. I'm still not entirely sure what we were supposed to do with the blue cheese but we decided to attempt spreading it on the french bread and eating it that way, which worked, sort of.

You know the really cool thing about today's adventure was that this was a new experience for everyone else that came with me too. Adventures are always great but they are even better when they can be shared. With that said, special thanks to Mom & Dad, Sandra (who miraculously got my Dad there on time), Mark (who was really not late at all), Sam , Joel, and Jamie for being such good sports and making today's adventure a resounding success, not to mention tons of fun! To everyone else, thank you for all the good wishes. Today was a very Happy Birthday and the perfect kick off for the year of adventures to come!