Night Out On the Town

This past Saturday the posse went for dinner for Rich's 25th birthday. The restaurant we went to was Alma de Cuba, one of Stephen Starr's many restaurants. If you couldn't tell by the name, its a Cuban restaurant. If you look at Alma's menu, you'll see that ceviche is one of their specialties.

They guys got to the restaurant early, so we all got mojiotos before sitting at our table. I got the suave mojito, you know, because I'm so suave. It consisted of Bacardi Limón and sugarcane syrup. It was really good. So good it might be considered a foo-foo drink, at least it didn't have an umbrella in it.
Michele ordered the mango martini with ketel one, mango liqueur, and mango purée. I had a sip of it and one word to describe it is "dangerous". Even though you can taste the vodka, its still not enough to keep you from slurping it down as if it was a delicious smoothie from Jamba Juice.
They serve they tasty rolls with some kind of pesto garlic mixture. I am currently trying to cut down on the carbs but these were so good I couldn't resist.
For appetizers, we ordered chorizo sliders and a couple ceviches. Picture below is is the yellowtail kingfish. The other two were the rainbow (tuna, salmon, black bass, w/ jalapeño & sweet potato) and the thai mixto (crab, shrimp, octopus, fluke, coconut-lech de tigre, mango & tomatillo). They were all very good. I picked the thai mixto because I like that stuff. Everyone seemed to like it. The yellowtail kingfish was a little fishy for some but I thought it was excellent.
For my second drink I decided to man up and get the classic mojito. I'm glad I did, it was even better than the suave. It also packed a punch, definitely got my $8 out of that drink.
Randomly, Jules was showing Michele pictures of a Pomeranian puppy. I couldn't find a picture of the one she had, but it looked like a fake puppy because it was so fluffed up.
For my entrée I ordered the rum cured duck breast served with creamy yucca, duck vigoron and smoked currants. The duck breast was succulent and tender. The slaw wasn't that bad either. I got to try some other dinners including Rich's Chilean sea bass, Graham's beef tenderloin, and whatever Jules had. The sea bass was something else. It just melts in your mouth like butter. I know for a fact I could feed this to someone who doesn't like fish and they would love it.
What's a birthday without dessert? Rich and Graham both got the chocolate cigar. Almond cake wrapped in chocolate mousse dusted with chocolate and served with dulce de leche ice cream. It was very fitting as both Rich and Graham share a love for smoking cigars. Each of their plates had these crazy match sticks made out of sugar and lit on fire.
I figured I didn't want to watch them eat so I also ordered a dessert, the dulce de lech crepes. Vanilla crepes filled with dulce de lech and served with truffled streusel, bitter chocolate glaze and smoked vanilla ice cream. Oh man was this good. I was hesitant to take a bite because it was so pretty looking, but didn't seem to be a problem after the first bite.
After dinner John and Kelly left to tend to their dog Smokey. The rest of us headed to Rum Bar for one more drink before heading back to Graham and Jules'.
I ordered a mai thai, that dark stuff you see on top is 151. Not as good as the classic mojito but still very tasty. Graham got one too.
Rich got a flight of rum. Not something I would do but hey, its his birthday! He can do whatever he wants!
We ended the night playing Golden Eye on the Wii. Brought back a lot of memories as I was a huge fan of the original on the Nintendo 64. Rich has been playing this game all week so of course he beat us the first game. But he soon got frustrated as Manthan, Graham, and I won the following games. Had a great time that night, not too often I get dressed up and go to fancy restaurants.