what do you do after the best meal of your life?

This is the question I must now confront. I feel a little bit at loose ends and not quite sure what to do with myself. I wish I could experience that pleasure forever, and at the same time feel a bit exhausted with deliciousness. Maybe I'll just eat toast for a few days to let my palate recover from the magnificence of that food.

Last night it was Manny's birthday and we went out to a new restaurant and had one of the best meals of my entire life. The restaurant is beer-centred, meaning they have a huge selection of beer from around the world, and they cook with beer in pretty much everything, and they have put a lot of thought into beer pairings, much as most good restaurants do with wine. To be honest, I didn't have super high expectations, even though this is the second venture of a very well-loved local restaurant that is supposed to have amazing food. I've never been there, though, so can't vouch for it. Although I'm pretty much non-drinking these days, I decided to make this my last hurrah and just enjoy it. And holy mackerel, did we enjoy it! So here's what we had:

Beer #1 - an organic amber ale from Olympia, Washington but I forget the name of the brewery. It was really nice and malty but had a big burst of hops to start off - delish.

Manny's beer - well, it was his birthday, so he had 4 different ones, including Samuel Smith's IPA, a nut brown ale from the BC interior somewhere, Pike Ale (another IPA, I think), and an Okanagan Springs Pale Ale. Suffice it to say that he had enough beer throughout the night that he actually voluntarily talked about his feelings by the end of the evening, and didn't seem to mind that I seized the opportunity to run with that and really get into some stuff.

Appetizer - mussels with Stella Artois, cream, tomatoes and leeks. These were incredible and the broth alone was almost enough to bring me to tears of pure joy. I could have just eaten about 3 orders of mussels and called it a day. Thankfully, I didn't, and went on to have...

Main - lamb shanks braised in a dark beer (again, I forget which one), and cooked so slowly that I just had to nudge it with my fork and the meat gently tumbled off the bone, on top of a bed of green lentils, topped with roasted tomatoes. This was truly sublime. I love lamb always, but this had to be one of the best lamb dishes I've ever had. The amazing part was how the flavours had combined to an incredibly rich complex taste, but I could still taste each distinct flavour - lamb, lentils, tomato, rosemary. I was pretty much in awe by this point. But wait! There's more!

Manny's main - he opted for the steak frites, which could have been boring if it wasn't so amazing. The mushrooms were braised in a blonde ale, which was then reduced to a beautiful rich sauce. The steak was perfectly cooked and surrounded with a generous portion of a sauce that wasn't described on the menu, but tasted to me like a heavenly combination of butter, leeks and a hint of blue cheese. It was dreamy. The fries were hand cut and amazingly light, and served with mayo and their homemade mango ketchup. But I mostly dipped the fries in the sauce of my main dish, because it was like the gravy that they serve in Heaven on Sundays when they have a giant roast beef dinner, and also the butter/leek sauce that came with Manny's steak.

Desert - this is where I started to lose my mind completely. I ordered the cheesecake that was made with porter and chocolate, but just a bit of chocolate - just enough to balance the tanginess of the cheese and the bite of the porter. It came with what was described on the menu as a coulis made with a cherry lambic, but tasted and looked like honey and the lambic reduced down to the clearest, palest pink nectar of the gods.

Beer # 2 - They recommended I order the Belgian lambic to go with desert, which was called Belle Vue Kriek and according to the menu is brewed with "wild yeast" and "undergoes a second fermentation with Morello cherry and elderberry juices." I don't know what all that means, but I know it produces one of the most delicious drinks I've ever had, an incredible beverage that combines the light fizziness of beer, the complex flavours of wine, and the sweet tanginess of sour cherries, which is one of my favorite flavours in the world. Eating a bite of cheesecake and taking a sip of beer brought the kind of joy that leaves me speechless and slightly vulnerable, all my ideas about what "delicious" really means suddenly in flux and up for debate. At this point, I was staring at the cheesecake in wonder, and Manny piped up, "You look at that thing like you look at the dog!" And he was so right. I look at my dog, and I am overcome with how much I love him, and I can't believe how much I love him. And I feel the same way about that cheesecake. It was fucking incredible.

So, friends, should you ever find yourself travelling across the Canadian prairie and desiring a meal to end all meals, please let me know and I will point you in the direction of this fine establishment. It was the most we had ever spent on a meal for the two of us, but I regret nothing. It was perfection.

Eat anything fantastic lately?