My Birthday Celebration

Even though my birthday was on Thursday, we decided to wait until Friday to celebrate. That way we could get all snazzied up for dinner and attend a show at the performing arts center.

We started with dinner at my favorite restaurant in Anchorage—Ginger.

This is the sophisticated, intelligent man who accompanied me on this date! 🙂

And moi—the birthday girl.

I got started with a bowl of soup because I was freezing.

Banana & Lemongrass Soup

with crab and curried eggplant

This soup was by far some of the best I’ve ever had. The fusion of the slightly tangy lemongrass and sweet, subtle flavors from the banana made this a delectable combination.

My only gripe was that it wasn’t very warm, so it didn’t help solve my problem of being cold.

Craig was jealous of my Spinach Prosciutto Salad last time, so that’s exactly what he ordered this time.

Spinach & Prosciutto

warm ginger and prosciutto dressing, pine nuts and julienne of roma tomato with carrots

Usually I spend several minutes perusing the menu looking for the exact dish I want, but as soon as I saw the tofu and quinoa dish, I knew that’s what I wanted.

I really enjoyed the tofu dish I had last time, so why not get something very similar again.

I couldn’t find the exact item on the menu online, but this is close to what I had:

Grilled Tofu & Quinoa

firm tofu marinated and grilled served with potato, edamame, and quinoa salad tossed in lemon and miso-honey vinaigrette

Talk about a protein powerhouse!

Overall, I really liked the dish, but it wasn’t as good as the one I previously had. It was a tad bit on the bland side and just didn’t blow me out of the water. It was still good, but nothing to rave about.

I don’t think Craig even looked at the menu last night. Once he finds something he likes, he doesn’t often waiver from what works.

Panang Beef Curry

beef tips simmered in a spicy coconut curry with onions and crimini mushroom served over jasmine rice with chopped peanuts

I snagged a couple of bites and had forgotten how delicious this was! I was wishing I would have ordered it instead!I ate most of my entree—Craig had a few bites—but was still hungry and definitely had room for dessert:

Ginger Pear Cheesecake with spiked caramel sauce

(Once again, this wasn’t exactly what we had but close.)

When the server brought the dessert out, I was pretty sad that it was so tiny! I don’t think the piece of cheesecake was even the size of my palm. It was still delicious, but I could have eaten about two of them.

After dinner, we walked over the the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts for our show where we saw the Calder Quartet—a stringed quartet.

(Source)

We had tickets to sit in the very front row, so we saw every movement, facial expression, and I could almost read their music. It was a lovely 90 minute performance.

I’m pretty sure the one musician even saw me falling asleep half-way through. Oops. . . It wasn’t bad—it was actually very good and soothing—I’m just not used to staying up past 9:30 p.m.

Question

Do you see fine arts performances often?