Happy 3rd Anniversary to Us!

Last night, Zack took me to dinner at The Press Club in downtown Melbourne.  This was a delayed celebration of our third anniversary (July 5), because I wasn't able to join him in Sydney earlier this week.  This restaurant is owned by George Calombaris, one of our favorite judges on MasterChef Australia.  No, George wasn't there (bummer!), but we had an awesome time at this fancy place.  It is described as combining "modern Greek cuisine with contemporary dining."  Our reservations were at 9 pm, and we were there until after midnight!

We ordered the symposium degustation, which means we each got eight courses of smaller sized portions of various things from the menu.  We started with rolls, olives, and olive oil with black salt.  We moved onto sweetbreads, a mushroom dish, a crab dish, salmon, duck, venison, some sorbet (to refresh the palate), and then dessert.  By the end, we were definitely full!  I'll go into more detail on the pictures I'll post on Shutterfly, but I've put a few of my favorites here.  This was the venison.  It had a raspberry sauce, and it was awesome!

This was the dessert.  On the left is chocolate mousse, and it was so thick and velvety.  On the right is creme fraiche, which is a French version of sour cream (it tastes like yogurt).  There are some salted caramel dollops (so good), chocolate crumbs, a cube of tea-flavored jelly stuff, and some sort of fruit in the middle of the plate.  The green things are tubes of apple-ginger flavored something or other.  All I know is that the whole thing tasted great!

It was really fun to try so many different dishes.  We were always excited for the next course to come out, and I could definitely see George's influence on MasterChef with some of the techniques and ingredients used.  We also had fun using our favorite MasterChef phrases ("This dish is a cracker!") and pretending like we were judging each plate.  The kitchen area was open and facing the restaurant, so it was also interesting to watch the chefs cook and plate up the fancy creations.  They were so calm and precise.  I guess they can't really yell at each other or look stressed out if everyone's watching!

Our first anniversary was spent on the beaches in Puerto Vallarta, our second was spent summiting four 14,000+ foot Colorado mountains in one day, and our third was spent (pun intended) at dinner at a fancy restaurant in the middle of Melbourne, Australia!  What on earth are we going to do next year?