eleventh

Jumpin' jehosephat - another year has rolled around, enough so that H and I celebrated our eleventh anniversary last Saturday.  After our Mt. Raymond hike, we got cleaned up and gussied up (for us, anyway) and went to Lugano Restaurant (3364 South 2300 East, SLC) for dinner.  We'd tried Lugano before but had been faced with a packed restaurant and a 45-minute wait for walk-ins; this time, we made reservations.  Which seemed unnecessary at first, since it wasn't very busy until nearly 8:30 p.m.  I guess Millcreek residents eat late.

Lugano has a great wine list and H picked out a New Zealand sauvingnon blanc, Silver Birch.  It was very good, light, crisp and fairly dry.  Yummy!  Then we got a lot of food, most of which were the evening's specials, sold well by our excellent waiter.  We started with a shared bruschetta: creamy ricotta spread on the ciabatta slices and topped with proscuitto-wrapped grilled asparagus and big flakes of parmesan - smoky, salty and quite good.  We then split a "whole leaf Caesar salad," which was more than enough for the two of us, with a flavorful but not overpowering dressing.  We nibbled on the warm and fluffy foccacia and spicy, garlicky olives until our entrees arrived.  I'd ordered the special ravioli which was filled with a light chicken and ricotta mixture, served on arugula and drizzled with a browned sage butter - really tasty (although I gave two of them to H because I couldn't eat them all).  H got the risotto special: local sweet corn and cracked pepper risotto (very good) topped with a large slice of stuffed, rolled pork loin.  We looked at the desserts but none of them particularly captured our interest; we did, however, indulge in after-dinner drinks - port for H, limoncello for me.

We really enjoyed our dinner at Lugano.  The service was solicitous but not overbearing and the food was quite good.  If you cut out the appetizer and the after-dinner drinks, prices are reasonable for the quality, and for our anniversary, a little splurge was in order.  All told, I'm glad we got in to Lugano this time!