Day 2 Part II: Why Are You Feeling Blue?

After hanging out poolside, I got ready for my big dinner.  In fact, I set up my reservation over a week ahead of time for Blue by Eric Ripert at the Ritz Carlton.  I had the pleasure of going to La Bernardin while I lived in NYC and jumped at the opportunity to go to one of his restaurants here in Cayman.  I’ll be honest, I had to totally psych myself up to go to a fancy dinner alone.  This was one of those places where reading something or using other distraction devices would be completely inappropriate.  Because it was such a nice place, I brought a special dress with me to wear for the dinner and new earrings that E bought me last month.  Unfortunately, I neglected to get a full-length photo of myself that evening.  I’m planning on wearing the dress to a friend’s wedding coming up so when I post those photos I’ll link back to this post.

I won’t go into a huge description about the food.  For one, I think the menu (below) does a better job than I will.  Second, I find food descriptions incredibly boring.  I’ve tried to read restaurant reviews online and about died.  I like the cliff’s notes version: good or not good.  Anyway, I did the tasting menu, which consisted of a 6-course meal culminating in a wonderful dessert of chocolate cake (different from the menu because I’m allergic to mangoes) and a taste of port.  I also showed up about forty-five minutes early because my dinner wasn’t scheduled until 8:30pm (a week in advance for one person).  I had a glass of brut rose champagne that incidentally matched my dress (a girl’s gotta have her accessories).  It was a lovely champagne that was a good blend of sweet and dry.  The bartender asked me what I was celebrating and I told him “just being here.”

Apparently, ordering a glass of champagne is not a normal occurrence... especially as a woman alone.  I spent the first 10 minutes (felt like forever) of my time at the bar worrying about looking like some sort of high-end hooker or gold digger on the prowl.  After a group of people left the bar for their table, I ended up talking to the gentleman next to me.  The man next to me ended up being the new head chef for a new restaurant at a new Ritz Carlton in Toronto.  He was the head chef of the #1 restaurant in Toronto (Canoe).  I ended up being convinced to eat at the bar instead of my table, mostly because we had been chatting for about 20ish minutes at the point my table was ready and my table faced the bar.  That would have been awkward.  Here is a photo of us and the menu (I did the wine pairing):

Another cool thing about meeting up with the chef is that he introduced me to the head chef at Blue!  AND I got to do a kitchen tour.  It was so cool to see a real (as in not on TV during Top Chef) professional kitchen!  Everything was super clean and since it was the end of the night people weren’t rushing around too much.  Here are the photos from that:

Plating of desserts

Moving fast in the kitchen

Pastry Chef

Chef Luis Lujan & Chef Tom Brody

I ended up staying at the restaurant until after midnight.  We (Toronto Chef and me) totally shut down the bar and ended up showing each other photos of our spouses, who weren’t able to make it to Cayman with us.  It was very nice to be able to share the meal with someone else.  Good food and good wine are better when shared.  The only downside was that I don’t remember the courses as much as I would have liked because I was enjoying the conversation so much.

Another benefit of staying until midnight is that I fortunately do not remember how much exactly my meal cost—completely a result of the glass of champagne, 6 tasting pours (1/3 glass each), and a night cap of the fabulous red wine. 
I also ended up signing up for a cooking class with the Chef Luis at Blue for Saturday.  I’m really going back and forth about it because it’s costly and I’m just not sure how big of a deal it would actually be (as in not sure just how good of a restaurant Blue is).  The thing that weighs TOWARDS doing it is the wine pairing option and eating lunch in the kitchen (and getting to wear a cool chef’s jacket).  I’ll probably do it because it won’t end up costing that much more than a normal “wet” lunch here in Cayman.  Things are just ridiculously expensive and the restaurants quote prices in the menu in Cayman dollars and then give you the bill in U.S. dollars with a 15% service charge!

Anyway, stay tuned: Next edition will be my Rum Point adventure.