Cosmos Restaurant

I'd been to Cosmos before for drinks but never given the food a whirl.  Restaurant Week proved to be the perfect time to get a 3-course taste of the restaurant's calibre without breaking the bank. 

Restaurant Week was a bit tough for me this year as I gave up fish and meat for Lent. Yikes! Many of the restaurants I wanted to try didn't offer meat-less (and that includes fish-less) entrees but I'm happy to have widened my horizons a bit because that led us to Cosmos for a wonderful supper.

We started with the beet salad served with panna cotta and a wonderful orange vinaigrette.  I'm a sucker for beets and these were perfectly done and a wonderful start to the meal. The salad was followed by a palate cleanser of grape juice with some sort of gelatinous (and I use that word affectionately) blob that exploded in your mouth upon the slightest tap of the teeth.  It was delicious and truly refreshing. I wish I'd gotten a picture because it really was very nifty-looking.  I love a good globular edible thing. 

My entree was the mushroom fettucine with peas and a light carbonara, tossed with the requisite parmesan. Despite giving up meat/fish, I really haven't been eating as much pasta as I expected, so this was a nice treat. The noodles were perfectly cooked, with a firmness that mirrored the texture of the mushrooms and provided a great vehicle of transportation for getting parmesan into my mouth. My date for the night ordered the pork loin and I will admit to eating my share of the leek spoon bread that accompanied his dish.  I make spoon bread on occasion, though my recipe has a stronger corn flavor, and I made a mental note to add leeks next time. Genius!

We picked different desserts (which, in my book, is the only way to go when ordering desserts so that you can taste more than one sweet), him opting for the chocolate and me for the spice cake.  The spice cake was straight out of any holiday party, with cinnamon and caramel flavors spinning throughout the light cake.  The chocolate mousse was dense and rich, more dense, in fact, than I usually would attribute to a mousse.  But there were no complaints, these were delightful ways to finish off a lovely meal.

As much as I love Bradstreet Crafthouse a couple of floors below, I'm hoping to return to Cosmos again soon. Drinks and small plates at Bradstreet, followed by something involving spoon bread upstairs...

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