On Food and Things...

Friday night we got back to the desert a bit later than usual, but we usually like to go out to dinner just the two of us after a long week at work. It helps end the work week, and mentally gets me in a weekend frame of mind. I contemplated going back to the Tropicale restaurant, which I wrote about last Saturday. The Tropicale has wonderful food and is really fun, but after some brief deliberation in the car, we decided on the Purple Palm restaurant, which is at The Colony Palms Hotel. It's one of those retro 1920's era hotels that was recently restored to it's full glory. I just love it too. The grounds of the hotel are so inviting, casually elegant. They have candles everywhere, which provides a great ambiance to the place, especially poolside.

above left: the clover leaf jacuzzi is really neat. above right: the swank retro dining room in the Purple Palm restaurant channels the Golden Age of Hollywood. Being The Palm Springs Savant, I am right in my element at this place!

above: Our reservation was for 10:00 pm so the place wasn't too busy. We both had the most amazing dinner: We started with the Caprese Salad, with fresh buffalo mozzarella, red and yellow heirloom tomatoes, fresh basil, greens, aceto balsamic, virgin oil, and fresh lavender. Then for our entree, (photo above right) we both had the Grilled Hawaiian Ahi Tuna. It was set on a bed of capellini pasta made from beets (red color), sliced brussel sprouts, roma tomato relish, honey tangerine butter, red pepper jus, served with a ring of honeydew-jalapeno sauce. It was SO incredibly delicious.
On Other Food and Things...
Last week I had a business dinner, and we went to a cool place that had something I'd never seen before: food served "Hot Rock" style.

above: "hot rock" thin sliced NY Steak. it was served with chili ponzu sauce, and sesame goma sauce. The hot rock was brought to the table sitting in bowl on a bed of rock salt. The raw steak was on a side platter.

above: the neat thing is you cook your own mini steaks, right on the hot rock, then dip it in the sauces. It was so very cool! It was a fun way to eat and entertain everyone along the way.
-Rick Rockhill