Day: July 16, 2007

With the kids happily tucked in with a pepperoni pizza and a movie on TV, Jim decided to take me out to try one of Mo’s other restaurants.  This time, we decide to head to the steak place.  We call and make a reservation for 5 o’clock.  It’s Friday night, Jim is home early from work, and we want to spend the evening with the girls, so an early dinner is going to work for us.

We get dressed to go, and we’re early, but Jim has to pick some stuff up from his locker at the gym and we drop a suit off at the cleaners and browse the mall.  Milwaukee is so clean and un-crowded, you hardly know you’re in a city.  It’s a nice walk around for a little bit and then we head to the restaurant.

It seems the 5 o’clock reservation is hardly needed – we are the ONLY ones in the restaurant.  We are promptly seated at a table by the window overlooking the street, and we settle in for a nice meal.  I am looking forward to sampling some of the steak, and feeling a little cautious about it.    My last steak experience was during our cruise, and I got a little sick from it.  That steak was a little buttery, so I’ll be more careful of the preparation when I order this time.

We spot an appetizer that immediately gets our attention.  Why?   Because it is an appetizer that costs $77.  Yep – not a typo – seventy-seven dollars for an appetizer.  We ask the waiter what it is, and really, this appetizer is a whole meal for both of us.  We ended up ordering it – and it is glorious!   It’s called the Mark Suter Seafood Platter, and it features good sized crabcakes, sitting in a red pepper sauce; grilled shrimp on the half shell – a selection of large shrimp, half of the shell removed, and grilled to perfection; and lobster tail that is so sweet and so tender, I could have eaten it all.  They serve the lobster with drawn butter, and a nice hoisin sauce to dip the shrimp into. 

The bread looks and smells wonderful, and it is served with both regular butter and the flavored butter of the day – strawberry.  I gotta tell you, that smelled nearly as good as the fresh, warm bread!   Jim says it’s tasty, and I am going to try to find a recipe to make it at home.

Jim orders a cup of the soup of the day, which is a roasted tomato swiss soup, and I order a cup of the lobster bisque.  I am not  a fan of tomato soup, but this soup has a great flavor that I could have enjoyed a whole cup of.  The lobster bisque is about the creamiest, sweetest version of this soup I have ever eaten.  Sometimes when you get it, the soup has a little texture to it – not a “grit” necessarily, but a bit of texture.  Mo’s lobster bisque is smooth like butter – creamy and delicious.  I almost ordered a bowl, because soup is something I can eat a good bit of, but thank goodness I ordered the cup.  I’m sure there was some kind of heavy cream or something in there making it so smooth.  There were bits of chopped lobster in the bottom of the bowl, but honestly, they were just a bonus.  The soup was great before I ever got to the lobster bits.

For dinner, we are going to share the Kobe beef filet mignon, cooked medium rare.  We order a side of white cheddar mashed potatoes to go with it.  The steak is tender, cooked to perfection, and delicately seasoned.  You may choose from a red wine sauce, a hollandaise or a bearnaise sauce to accompany your steak, but we chose to let the beef stand on it’s own.  The one disappointment of the night was the side of potatoes we chose.  It was a good sized portion – although for $6, it should be – and definitely more than enough for two of us to share – more like a side dish for 3 or 4.  But they were pretty much just mashed potatoes.  The white cheddar flavor was so subtle, you barely noticed it. 

We had no room for dessert, but since we booked a reservation as a special occasion (19 years since we first met), they brought us a complimentary dessert.  I didn’t get to eat any of it, but it was a scrumptious looking  chocolate bread pudding with fresh whipped cream, and the plate was drizzled with chocolate in a lattice pattern.  Jim enjoyed it a lot, and there was but a wee bite left to take back to the kids, so we left it.

Overall, the attention to detail, the service, and the atmosphere would have brought us back for another try even if the meal itself had been mediocre.  But having had such a fabulous meal, this could become one of our favorite Milwaukee restaurants.

Holy Jaysus!!   And to think the name of the shop is Flynn and O’Hara!   It’s me own people, from Ireland herself,  price gouging me.

I took the kids to get school uniforms today.  The total bill?   $652.00!!!   They started by ringing Eilis’ bill up first.  Okay, after I picked myself up off of the floor with that total, I figured that this is her first year in real uniforms, and really, she needed a little of everything, so her bill should be high.  Then they totalled Brighid’s bill.  Brighid already has much of her uniform.  This year, she needs new blouses, because after  a year of day in and day out wear, they get pit-stained and dingy looking.  She needs a new pullover sweater.  She didn’t even wear hers that much in the first two years, but this year, they are required to wear them every day, and the one that’s two years old is getting those little pilly things that sweaters get.  Then, because they have an on-going problem with shoes, she is required to purchase the only approved shoe from Flynn and O’Hara as opposed to any black shoe.  UGH.  Brighid alone was close to $300. 

Do these people realize that I still have to buy tights, socks, underwear, and clothes for these kids to wear when they are NOT at school?   And this doesn’t include the $100 plus dollars I already spent on PE uniforms.  I still have to take Eilis for both everyday school shoes, plus sneakers. 

It’s an outrage that uniforms cost this much money.  What’s worse, they could tell you to put your kids in navy pants and white blouse, and you can go to ANY store – Target, Walmart, Sears – and find the right color pants and blouse. 

Flynn and O’Hara has a new outrage this year.  If your items are not in stock (and I have NEVER in all the years Brighid has been in Catholic school gone and been able to pick up the uniforms that day – they always have to order them), they will charge you an additional $7 to deliver them to your home.  No thank you.  I’d rather buy $7 worth of gas to get there myself than give them another $7 on top of what they’ve already gotten.

The pot of gold?   Right under the cash register at Flynn and O’Hara.  Jaysus!!

Lyrics to the old song – made famous by several artists, but never done as well as by Cozy Morley…

When your old wedding ring was new
And each dream that I dreamed came true
I remember with pride how we stood side by side
What a beautiful picture you made as my bride

Even though silver crowns your hair
I can still see the gold ringlets there
Love’s old flame is the same as the day I changed your name
When your old wedding ring was new

So today was a big milestone day for Jim.  After probably 13 years of having it stuck, he got his wedding ring off.  It came off and slid back on fairly easily, considering it has been locked onto his finger for so long!   He has lost a significant amount of weight, and makes at least 3 visits to the gym each week to work on losing more and toning up.  He’s doing a great job, he looks phenomenal – not that he ever didn’t look awesome, and he feels really great.  But this was a big deal.  I think it’s hard to see for yourself how much weight you are losing until something like this happens.

I’m so proud of him – and so grateful for the tan lines his ring leaves now when he takes it off 😉