by jon bosworth and cassie larue
It is one thing to find a restaurant where a couple can eat out for twenty dollars or less, it is an entirely different experience to get to spend a full evening on the town and still keep your tally below the twenty dollar mark. This is why Cassie and I are ever-so-thankful for the downtown ArtWalk on the first Wednesday of every month. Although I have been attending ArtWalks fairly regularly for quite some time, Cassie has never joined me. I was either going to catch a specific band, see a specific friend’s work, or because EU was sending me to cover some event taking place within it, none of which leaves me disposed to spend quality time with my date. This last ArtWalk, however, was the exception and hopefully the start of a regular date night trend.
As the name of this column implies, the first step of our night on the town was to eat. Downtown has some fabulous places to eat. Cassie and I live in Avondale, so when we get tired of the neighborhood cuisine, downtown is an easy alternative. In fact we’ve been out several times in the last few weeks eating and dining downtown in research for this column. But when we sat down in Chew for dinner, there were too many things on the menu that we wanted to settle for staying under the twenty dollar mark (even still our bill was less than $30 before tip). The same goes for Café Nola, there are just so many delectable items on their menu and great wines, that keeping the tab small was an exercise in discipline that we just weren’t up to.
So we kicked off the night at Shelby’s Coffee Shoppe inside of the new library at the heart of the downtown ArtWalk. Shelby’s is a delightful, locally owned coffee shop with two locations in town. Their Beaches location has been around for a while and the downtown location is as new as the library it is in. In fact if you only came to this one block on any given Wednesday, you would have terrific access to the great new library, their fantastic gift shop, Shelby’s fresh brewed coffee drinks and light bites, our Museum of Contemporary Art, their exquisite gift shop and Café Nola. That’s not even mentioning Hemming Plaza, which is alternately fun with music and tents and creepy, crawling with the mentally disabled and defecating homeless. But that is not the case on ArtWalk night.
Cassie ordered the Nutty Green Grannies, a spinach salad with fresh mushrooms, Granny Smith apples, walnuts and gorgonzola cheese and served with a side of their homemade lemon-thyme vinaigrette. The ingredients were superbly fresh and bouncing with delightful, light flavors, and a spinach salad often has the tendency to feel too strong or weighed down, but the fruit and nuts were a nice touch. Cassie would have preferred to have some tomatoes in it, and the friendly servers at Shelby’s certainly would have been glad to accommodate. The only other problem with the salad was the dressing. The lemon-thyme vinaigrette did not offer the sweetness that a spinach salad requires, and it was a poor match for the ingredients of this salad, even if it had been a well-conceived dressing. They also have a homemade Caesar, a balsamic or herb vinaigrette, a hoisin-mustard dressing and a bleau cheese. We didn’t try any of these others, but many sound like a delicious alternative to the lemon-thyme.
I definitely recommend their sandwiches. I ordered the Panini, which has salami, pepperoni, provolone cheese, red bell peppers and balsamic vinaigrette served on a hot Italian ciabatta bread. The flavors of this sandwich perfectly melted sweet and tart into a delicious concoction and was served with chips and a pickle. Other sandwiches that looked delicious were the Jarboe (roast beef, cheddar cheese, horseradish mayo with romaine, spinach, tomatoes, red onions and sprouts) and The Strand (a chicken salad sandwich with pecans and grapes). In addition to these delectable sandwiches, they also have soups, pastries, and a variety of breakfast items. Our dinner, with tropical sweet tea for Cassie and a nice cup of coffee for me, came out to $19.96.
Even better than a great dinner for under twenty, especially wherein we both had plenty to eat, is that afterwards we got to look at all of the Christmas trees in the library, then headed over to MOCA to take in the Essence and Materials exhibit, both for free. We made our way over to the Thief in the Night Gallery inside the Hayden Burns building and enjoyed a few complimentary cups of wine, a deliciously mild Shiraz. Next we went over to Burrito Gallery to catch Klob’s bluesy, Randy Newman-like set and ran into a friend that bought us a cocktail. By the end of the night we were still under our $20 budget and got to see plenty of art, some other spectacular sights, drink some great wine and enjoy a new local classic to the city proper. I hope Cassie and I can make a regular date night out of the monthly ArtWalk. In this economy, there isn’t a safer bet.
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