happy birthday to me

Long ago for my 30th birthday, we were in Jackson, New Hampshire, where the temperatures plummeted to nearly -25 F at night and it was pretty much too cold to ski.  For my 40th birthday (!!!!!), we are of course in Salt Lake City, where it hasn't snowed for a week and so we probably won't ski.  I'm noticing a recurrent theme here.

Regardless of the probably-not-skiing, I had a very nice birthday.  H set his alarm for 12 midnight, just to be the first to wish me a happy birthday.  Our dear friends P&C sent me gorgeous flowers at work.  I had phonecalls from my folks, H's folks, my brother, H's brother and my uncle.  I had eight million felicitations on Facebook.  I got cards from a bunch of folks.  And H took me out to dinner - a journey more epic than either of us had imagined.

H's favorite Asian food is Indian, which I also love, and my current favorite is Thai (although I've had a really craving for pho lately), so I'd gotten a list of five Thai and one Indian restaurant recommendations from my foodie work neighbor Jody.  The Indian place, Taste of Punjab, was the closest to our apartment so we decided to give that a shot instead of driving all over the valley.  (Jody herself has never eaten at ToP but the daughter of a friend who used to live in NYC says that ToP really good Indian food.)  So we tossed the dog in the car - even tho' we were going to 1241 E 8600 S in Sandy - and headed south and west for a bit, finally pulling up in front of a big restaurant ... that was completely dark and had a sign in the window reading "Closed until January 22."  Hmm.

I pulled out the little list Jody had given me and Bangkok Thai was the only place below 3000S so again, to keep the driving to a minimum, we drove north to 3142 So. Highland Drive ... except that, "current" website notwithstanding, Bangkok Thai is no longer in business there and instead there's a brand newKathmandu/Tibetan/Himalayan/Nepalese restaurant instead.  That's not yet open.

Now what?  We scrolled through the closest restaurants to our location on our GPS; when I said we could go to Crown Burger, H growled "we are not going to Crown Burger for your 40th birthday."  I wracked my brain and came up with this:  there's a restaurant I've read about that's up near REI (3285 E 3300 S), which isn't too too far away, but I don't remember the name and don't remember what kind of food it is - not Mexican or Asian, probably "New American" or somesuch.  Since that was as good as it was going to get, we started driving towards REI, staring myopically at all the signs as we went past.

CITRIS GRILL - that's it!  That's the one I was thinking of (at 2991 E 3300 S), and that's where we ended up.  I had a beer and H had a diet Coke to try to stay awake; for dinner I had spinach and cheese raviolis with chicken and a pesto cream sauce (quite rich and each of the four raviolis was nearly the size of my palm - I had to give 1 1/2 of them to H) while H had a little pizza and a mixed green salad, and 1 1/2 of my raviolis.  And we split a chocolate brownie sundae for dessert.  The food was okay, not great, but the prices were pretty good (H's pizza and salad together were only $9), including the specialty martinis for $6 (which I did not have) and the on-special margaritas for $3 (which I also did not have).  The joint was jumping, full of people, and the service was quick (rather too quick, actually, but it's hard to complain about not having to wait for your food) and super-friendly. 

I'm not sure we'll go back anytime soon - too many other places to try, especially after January 22nd - but yes, it was nicer than going to Crown Burger for my birthday.  (Maybe I'll get to go to Crown Burger this weekend: you get pastrami on top of your burger instead of bacon!)