January 19th: Duartes

Down a dirt road, in the middle of nowhere was a restaurant called Duartes. This restaurant made all of their meals from fresh food. Most of the food came to the restaurant earlier that day. Here, we were given a few choices for an appetizer and a few choices for dinner. I chose the cream of asparagus soup and the pork tenderloin. Personally, I am a big fan of cream based soups, and cream of asparagus is one of my all time favorites. When my soup came, I was excited to take a piece of their delicious, warm bread and butter and dip it into my hot soup. I did just that, and it tasted so excellent. After adding a tiny bit of salt, there is nothing better than a bowl of nice creamy asparagus soup. When dinner came, I looked at the plate and noticed how much food was on the plate. There were about six slices of the pork, with gravy drizzled on top, and a huge quantity of chard. I had never had chard before, so I didn’t know what it was going to taste like. It didn’t look very good, but it surprisingly wasn’t bad at all. That was my favorite part of my main entrée. The pork was good also, and I could taste a difference in the quality of the meat, but my favorite part was still the chard. For dessert, we all tried a little of the olallieberry pie. Before seeing this item on the menu, I had never heard of this type of berry, but I was excited to try it. My first bite I didn’t like that much. The pie was extremely tart, and my slice was so hot it was hard to eat. Everyone else was saying that his or her pie was really good, so I was interested in seeing what theirs tasted like. I tried a bite of the pie across the table from me, and I knew what they were saying know when they said it was good. Theirs had the perfect amount of sweetness and tartness, and it wasn’t excruciatingly hot. Overall, I really enjoyed this meal.