Restaurant Review - Burnell's

Last night we headed downtown to try the newly opened Burnell's. They are located in the old Mayberry space on Vine Street...and while I'm happy for Mayberry to have moved onto bigger things...I really missed the niche that Mayberry left open in that small, cozy, creative little byo on vine street... We checked out Burnell's menu and it sounded delicious so we headed downtown to check it out..

The restaurant space is very similar to the old Mayberry Space layout wise, but the art, etc has all been changed out....

A friendly waiter brought us menus, a wine opener and some glasses and told us to feel free to take our time and order one thing at a time (my favorite way to eat)... All of the small plates are $12 (or 3 for $33)...and then there are some sides for other various side dishes..

We started off with the 

Roasted Wild Mushrooms, Baby Arugula Salad, Granna Padano & Challah Toast Points

 Yum, the toast points were salty and garlicy and the arugula was dressed with lemon and a sort of parmesan cheese...This was like a little tasting plate of my favorite foods... I put the arugula and mushrooms on Challah bread...totally delicious. I would definitely order this dish again..

Then we were accidentally eavesdropping on another couple that asked if they could buy some of the soup of the day to go, so I struck up a conversation with them and they highly recommended it, so next we ordered a cup of that... according to the waiter it was a traditional Irish vegetable stew with the American addition of some tomatoes. It was topped with a delicious spinach pesto...
It was perfect for the cold rainy night we were having...

 Next up we ordered the chicken..specifically:
Herbed Crispy Skin-On Amish Chicken Breast, Colcannon Potato Smash

 Yum, the potato smash was topped with some kind of red cabbage/bacon/bacon drippings situation and the super tender chicken had a little piece of delicious crispy skin on top. Another awesome and different dish..

Next up we ordered the Osso Bucco
Lamb Osso Bucco, Braising Jus, Root Vegetable Puree

The lamb was cooked really nicely but the real winner on this one was root vegetable puree....it left Rob and I both wishing we had a spoon to eat the leftovers out of the bowl. Holy crap this puree was good... SO.

DELICIOUS....

We finished our night with some shortbread cookies and coffee and it was the perfect way to end the meal...each of these plates of shortbread cookies was $1... One was a shortbread with pomegranate and the other with coffee. Rob preferred the pomegranates while I was partial to the coffee, but both were really good.

 This place has been officially added to our short list of go-to restaurants....so do yourself a favor and get down to Vine Street and try it out!!

Fancy Floors

We live in a 120 year old house...that I absolutely adore...but there are some things that I don't particularly love. Within the first 3 minutes in our house I knew it was mine.. I didn't have this feeling with any other house... I walked through it and said where do I sign. I could picture family parties in the backyard and dinner parties in the dining room.... but it's been loved....and it's old....and it's had some inhabitants in the past that maybe thought they were a little more handy than they were...and so it was officially time to re-do the hardwood floors. I thought about not even sharing this because once we moved out all of our fun rugs and pretty furniture, the floors looked even worse.... it was like one of those things where you pass something every day that eventually you don't even notice it anymore..or when you drive home from work and wonder how the heck you got home...please tell me this has happened to you too? But they were bad. With a capital Bad.

Anywhoo.....the time had come to roll up our sleeves, move out literally every piece of furniture to the garage/basement/second floor, move out out of our house and turn they keys over to our entrusted floor guy to get started.... Here are the terrible, old, at some point someone rented their own sander and sanded against the grain, worn out floors:

You can see here where someone used the sander in the wrong direction. Sanding 101 FAIL

We call this the "parquet room" I hated this room and wanted to rip it out and make it match the rest of the house, but the floor guy convinced us it would look cool and to leave it....

multi-colored, cracked and put in terrible at the addition

cracked transition and mismatched/mis-colored parquet...turrible.

And now for the afters (cue angel chorus)

That parquet shined up like a new penny! Floor Guy was totally right and saved us some major money...
 It's so pretty now!

Do you remember this transition? Probably not..let me refresh your memory...

This was one of those "why did we wait 2.5 years to do this" kind of projects...and it looks fantastic!
I am totally obsessed with how new our house looks and it also inspired a few other projects that perhaps I need to share.... I haven't shared any house posts in a long while...

What do you think? Such a difference right? He said ours was in the top 5 restorations he thinks he's done....which probably just means ours were in some of the worst shape he's seen...but I'll still take it as a compliment :)

Happy Easter!

We hosted Easter at our house this year and had another absolutely gorgeous Easter day. Good food, good company, good weather, and a playful 7 month old puppy who left our 7 year old puppy completely worn out.... it was a great day!

Here is our day in pictures....

Pizza Monkey Bread- a hit every time :)

Hope you had a great Easter with your family!!