Food Crawl - 30th Birthday in Boston

Yep...I'm 30!  It was my birthday yesterday, so the friends took me out for high tea downtown!  It was a fancy afternoon :)

Before we met up with the gals, I tried to pose real cool in my bday dress.  I'm sure you can imagine how that turned out...

 

posing

falling

Yea. Real cool (see Dave's successful attempt at coolness at the bottom of this post).

After a quick trip to Hotel Chocolat for my favorite salted caramels, we popped over to L'Espalier. 

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Totally fancy-schmancy, with a cool elevator guy.  I was with Theresa, and when we got upstairs, we were greeted by the hostess- she then directed us to the salon to wait for Leah (she got trapped near the Commons because of the Jimmy Fund walk!).

The first tea that we received upon arriving at our table was this hand-tied little ball of tea/flowers:

You plop it into hot water (although I doubt "plop" is the technical term)...

 

...and wait for it to bloom:

Below is the menu for the rest of the teas- they were all included, so we could try each one!

We chose the "Little Red Riding Hood" fantasy tea, which came with a delightful assortment of tea sandwiches and petit fours.

Lobster with herbed cream on a breakfast radish, Roasted guinea hen profiterole with garlic aïoli,

Jonah crab salad with gribiche and American caviar on a deviled egg (the best one!),

Smoked salmon on wheat with yuzu kosho crème, and English cucumber with candied lemon and sorrel creamcheese on citrus bread .

Theresa and Leah being all fancy (pinkies are up, if you can't tell)

When the dessert plate came out, mine had a special birthday treat!

Here is the Pâte à choux swan with espresso Chantilly cream:

...and here are the Almond apricot scone and chocolate cinnamon scone (hanging out with a delectable mango trifle!)

Not pictured is the Greek yogurt panna cotta- which was just heavenly!  It was an unassuming little patty of creamy, rich goodness.  Trust me.

We also got a few amazing accoutrements:

which we ate by the spoonful :)

Here's the view of Boylston street from our table:

I asked the hostess to snap a photo of us on our way out, but I think she didn't understand what I was saying when I explained how to focus on my camera (I think she MUCH preferred the girls who handed her an iPhone to take their picture!)

After we ate, we went out for pedicures. I told you...this was a fancy outing!

Can you tell which color is mine? I'm sure you can, and I'm sure you're not surprised

Post nails, we shopped at a few boutiques on Newbury street, where I picked up a clearance skirt and necklace, Leah got a cute shirt, and Theresa purchased 2 shirts! Success!

It was time to meet up with the boys, and when I was asked what I wanted to do for dinner, I had a hankering for hot dogs.  Ha!  Not as classy as the rest of the day, but boy did they hit the spot!!

Of course, we went to Spikes.


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Matt, Theresa, and Adam

Chili Cheese dog:

Junkyard dog:

And mine, the 57 T Bird (no, that's not grease...the oogy stuff is honey mustard, covering the melted cheese!!)

The boys apparently had a food crawl of their own while we were doing girly stuff- including Tasty Burger, Marliave, Thinking Cup, and a trip to Chinatown for pork buns.

At the beginning of the post I promised you Dave's attempt at cool-ness.  WAY better than mine! (but maybe that's because I captured the radical lens flare! hehe)

The drive home over the Mass Ave bridge

Thanks for making my bday so fun!