GNO and a Winner!

Let's pick a winner for my Blogiversary gift certificate giveaway... Random.org assisted, and a big congratulations goes to...Alana! I hope that you enjoy the $25 gift certificate to D'Vine. Email or DM me on Twitter with your address, and I'll drop it in the mail. Thank you to everyone that entered, and for all of the kind words about my blog turning 2. It's been an amazing year, and I've loved sharing it with all of you.

Now on to the regularly scheduled post:

Last Friday was Girls' Night Out with some of my favorite ladies. A plan was made to start with dinner and drinks at Market in Rocky River.
This was my second visit to Market, and I wasn't too thrilled with my meal the first time so I was looking forward to giving it another shot. I (try to) always believe in second chances. While the company was fantastic, I still left that night feeling underwhelmed by the food and service and annoyed at how loud it is in the main dining area. Unless someone else is planning, I think that this was my last trip there to dine. It just isn't for me. This statement makes me feel old, but I just prefer to have a quieter, more intimate setting when dining with friends or "R". If I wanted to shout to my friends to be heard, then we would have gone straight to a bar or club. I blame it on the high ceilings and wood interior. It just doesn't make for great acoustics.

But on to the food...We started with an order of the Pretzel Crusted Pickle Chips- dill pickle slices, pretzel crust and homemade French onion dip ($9). I had shared an order of these last visit, and they were just as good (if not better) this time. The tangy pickle with the crunch of the pretzel crust is delicious. We also shared the Salsa Flight- mango salsa, pineapple salsa, sweet corn salsa served with fresh tortilla chips ($8). All were decent, but kind of typical.For my entree, I ordered the Short Ribs- Szechaun braised shortribs, wasabi mashed potatoes, and house veggies ($21).
Our server had suggested this dish once I narrowed my options down to two, so I went with it. The meat itself was tender and didn't require much use of my knife, but they were much fattier than recent shortribs that I've had at other restaurants. I've totally been on a shortribs kick lately. So this meant that I had to inspect and tear away several large pieces of fat before really digging in. Yuck. The house veggie of the night was green beans, which were cooked well. The slight crunch added great texture to the dish. But then there were the wasabi mashed potatoes. I am a big fan of spice and heat, and love wasabi with my sushi...so I thought, "Why not- this sounds interesting" when I ordered. Well, wasabi can be easily overdone since it is such a powerful flavor, and in my opinion there was just too much punch in the potatoes for them to be truly enjoyable. I should have known better.

Overall, this trip was better than the first in terms of food (but still not great). But I still think they have a ways to go on the restaurant side of things. Both times that I have dined there the service has been pretty bad. Our server this trip left us alone with the menus for far too long, and once our meals were finished the dirty plates didn't disappear for about 15 minutes. Even as the restaurant traffic significantly thinned, we felt a little neglected. There really should be no excuse at that point.

Finally, we paid and then high-tailed it to Around the Corner for some drinks, laughs, a Cleveland Snookie sighting, and even some booty-shaking (which resulted in free shots- thanks, "A"). Another fantastic Girls' Night Out for the books!Market
1137 Linda Street
Rocky River, Ohio 44116
(440) 799-4292