Bicycle and a farewell

For the second time this week, we got together with our Italian stallion friend (ha!) and his lovely wife to say bon voyage to a UMMS attending who's leaving for a new hospital. After being little Betty Crocker inside all day, I was ready to do something civilized.

The five of us met at the Bicycle and were, I'm sure, the bain of our server's existence for the night. We were THAT table that, no matter how many times she came to take our order we were never ready, we returned the first bottle of wine because it wasn't what we thought, we never shut up long enough for her to offer us fresh pepper, and so on. However, I have no doubt her tip was good.

I got the chilled melon soup to start, and Joe got the sashimi tuna and avocado tartare. I know better than this! I should have gotten that too. It's the most incredible thing on the menu, hands down. We both got salads as our entrees, and before we knew it, two bottles of wine were down the hatch between the five of us.

Two things the Bicycle doesn't have: 1) mixed drinks and 2) espresso. For our Mexican friend, these were both travesties.

So dessert and coffee moved to our friends' house two blocks away. After two mottled attempts, we gave up on the vintage espresso machine and settled for multiple cups of coffee. Our friend opened this beautiful bottle of 10-year old Portugese Port. Very smooth.

Bonus! They had ripe figs growing on a tree in the back yard, so we did a little picking and had fresh figs and Port for dessert. That was my first fresh fig experience. What a gorgeous fruit - green on the outside and fleshy pink on the inside. Of course the Italian would have a fig tree in Baltimore. It's all or nothing, baby.