Eve - Ann Arbor

I like to spend my last day of summer vacation doing some shopping and hitting a nice restaurant for lunch. So last week I headed out to Ikea (blogged here from my iPhone), and then decided to do a little exploring in Dexter and Ann Arbor. I ended up in the Kerrytown area in Ann Arbor and noticed the restaurant called "Eve." Just last week I had read that the owner of this restaurant was one of the contestants on the new season of Top Chef. I discovered that they had just started serving lunch about 2 weeks ago. The perfect place for the last lunch of the summer!


The restaurant is tucked behind the brick building that is next to the farmer's market. It is quite cozy inside - one main room and then a little room in the front by the bar. The decor is what I'd describe as an upscale lofty look. Even though the main room had a number of empty tables, I was put at a small table in the front which was about 12 inches away from the table next to me. A bit uncomfortable - I felt like I was eating with the strangers next to me.


I ordered the Aromatic Lamb pastry. When it arrived, I first thought they had forgotten the lamb and just given me the salad. But when I pushed the salad aside, I found the pastry hidden underneath. I'm not sure why it was served like that, I'd think you'd want the pretty pastry on top, but maybe discovering it hidden underneath is part of the experience. The salad was delicious - it had a lot of mint mixed in with the spinach and I was surprised how refreshing that combination was! (A great way for me to use up some of the mint from my garden!) And the flaky pastry with the lamb inside was wonderful. The ground lamb was sweet with golden raisins (and maybe cinnamon?), crunchy from pine nuts, and it also had some heat. Very unusual and creative!


I needed to have some dessert to end off the last lunch of the summer. They only had one dessert - triple chocolate pots de creme. I guess you only need one dessert when that one dessert is amazing! It is served in two pots - one chocolate and one with brown sugar whipped cream. When I saw that, I thought, certainly I won't eat all that whipped cream! Wrong! A little dip of chocolate and then a little dip of cream - what a heavenly bite! The chocolate was perfect - I think it was a blend of dark and milk chocolate ( which I loved, because I'm not a huge fan of pure dark chocolate). The chocolate was thick and rich, almost like a ganache.


And you can see by my empty cup that I scraped out every last bit!


That night I watched the first episode of Top Chef to cheer for Eve. (I think she came into the restaurant when I was finishing my meal. I had pulled up the Top Chef website on my iPhone to look at her picture.) She ended up in the bottom two, but was not eliminated. Hopefully she will do better next week!