Pie Night at Dominique Ansel Kitchen

Jeeze, I have been doing so many fun things lately - kind of making up for the less-great-than-hoped-for summer, but unfortunately I'm in the usual September stress-out time at work, and with a couple of additional projects going on, so I haven't been keeping up with the blogging. Boo!

So there will be some catching up to do...no, even more catching up to do, I haven't even finished Colorado, and then there was Indiana, and now there's more...well, better to be doing too much fun stuff to keep up with than not, right?

Tonight, I wanted to just toss up a quick post about a spectacular food thing that my spectacular-food-loving friend M. finally got me to go to - Pie Night at the Dominique Ansel Kitchen!

I think she's been trying to get me to do this for a couple of years. The first year, they only did one night and it was like winning Lotto to get a ticket. The second year, the menu didn't quite speak to me - I love pie, but the idea of Pie Night is that you get an hour to eat all the pie you want, and M. thinks that the menu was heavily slanted towards the dessert pies with only one or two savory pies, and I do remember thinking that might be more dessert than I could handle (I have quite a sweet tooth but there are limits).

This year, it was four savory pies (oxtail, Old Bay crab pot pie, ham and fontina, and a mushroom cottage pie) and five dessert pies (classic apple, chocolate horchata, plum blackberry almond, peanut butter, and a honey clementine orange blossom cream pie). That was perfect! Mandy was able to nab us a pair of tickets, and oh my, it was WONDERFUL. The only pie I wasn't absolutely crazy about was the mushroom cottage pie, which I should have stayed away from because I'm generally not crazy about mushrooms, and with so many other varieties I should've skipped that one to save room for more of something else.

The pies were great, the mulled wine was delicious and free-flowing, and the service was just fantastic. M. has been having some mobility issues recently (hopefully temporary); the staff couldn't have been more accommodating, first making sure that we got a table right by the door, then bringing her plates of pie so she didn't have to wait in line. And they were so pleasant all the way through -- we were the second seating on Wednesday night, and it's a very popular event, so it's a fast-paced and probably stressful evening for the staff, but they were cheerful and friendly to everyone all the way through.

And did I mention that the pies were great? YUM.

Here are some photos - I forgot my camera but M. let me use her iphone.

Hope this becomes one of our annual things!