33% Restaurant Week Success Rate

As the old saying goes, best laid plans going awry because this snowy winter is a dirty dirty a-hole!! Oh wait, that's not how it goes? Could-a fooled me.

At least I got to go on a lovely girl date with the lovely BK to arguably the most famous and best restaurant in all of Cleveland, the one and only Lola. Even getting there involved braving a small snowstorm!

But boy was the arctic tundra worth it!! Beef cheek perogies with wild mushrooms and a horseradish cream and a lunch sized bowl of Michael Symon's mac & cheese. His was the first "gourmet" mac & cheese I ever had so it has a special place in my food heart: goat cheese, roasted chicken, and rosemary. Every time we go to Taste of Tremont, I start the day with a bowl of mac and a mint lemonade while we walk... I basically just took that sidebar to start dreaming of hot July days eating on the streets of Tremont....

Of course I left my phone back at the office (the 2nd time I'd misplaced my phone in one week), so no pictures for posterity - just use your imagination!

Sadly, I have yet to check off any new places from my dining list - although Friday night we hit up a new spot that hasn't even been around long enough to be added to my list! Bar 145 in Avon is sort of a chain-ish type place. Looks like they have several locations around Ohio but then again I guess we can now consider Melt a chain restaurant by those standards - and Melt will NEVER be a chain in my mind.

Bar 145 actually seems to fit well into building up some new options for the Avon area. Basically there isn't much in Avon proper other than Strip Steakhouse and Bistro 83. For years I attributed this to just a little less hip of an area that was just fine with Red Robin and Applebees thankyouverymuch... but as many people that I work with around my age with wee little ones are starting to settle down into the suburbs and out of our city lifestyles (myself included) our tastes for better dining options has traveled with us. And I'm all for that!

I digress. As always. We happened upon Bar 145 to celebrate the birth of a good friend with ohhhh 18 of her closest... it started small and snowballed, lol. For that many people on a Friday night, our servers were excellent! Their menu is very burger centric, which I love, but for whatever reason, I wasn't feeling a burger so I decided to try the Salmon BLT and it did not disappoint! Now we'll just have to go back so I can sink my teeth into some burger-y goodness. I doubt we'll have a hard time convincing anyone to join us as it was definitely thumbs up from the crowd - even the wee little babies that are now part of the entourage! There was a band setting up when we were leaving, so I'd like to go back on a night where we can rock out, but babies and extremely loud rock music aren't a great idea :)

So restaurant week didn't go as planned, but I got some good quality time with those I love anyway - the restaurants aren't going anywhere soon so maybe when the weather turns and my husband returns to a normal-ish work life we can go check them out.