Girl Date!

Since these two goofballs weren’t going to be around Saturday, I made my own plans. 🙂 And no, they did not involve beer!

The boys headed South for some golfing. I went to the gym Saturday morning, then hung around the house for a few hours catching up on my Netflix shows, cleaning, doing laundry, and organizing photos. I sat on the back porch for awhile and read too. It was nice not being rushed to do too many things. Then I drove to NE Portland to meet my friend Robyn for a nice dinner.

I met my friend Robyn at Belly Restaurant. It was a cute place, very “Portland.”

I was a few minutes early so took some pictures and then Robyn arrived.

I moved from the bar and suddenly felt dizzy. It was really bizarre. It took a few minutes for the dizziness to pass. I wondered if it was dehydration. I decided not drink alcohol with dinner. At first I wanted to have one glass of wine or a cocktail, especially since their cocktail menu was pretty creative! But I decided to stick with water only and drank a gallon.

For being a Saturday night, it wasn’t crowded at all. The people started to trickle in closer to the time we ended up leaving, but for the most part it was a quiet, intimate dinner. We had great service too, which is a rarity in Portland.

Robyn and I decided to split a Happy Hour appetizer. We split the fried polenta with red chili ailoi sauce and it was FANTASTIC! The polenta was a substitute for fries or tater tots and much better in my opinion. The red chili sauce was the best part. I’d love to find a recipe for this and try to recreate it.

Polenta

Robyn ordered the salmon entree. It was a pan-roasted salmon with a veggie salad and salsa verde. She said it was really good. The salmon looked perfect to me.

Salmon

I ordered the braised pork shoulder entree. It came with bucatini pasta, charred onions, peas and butter. I thought the pork was really tasty and soft. I wasn’t impressed with the pasta and wished there had been some kind of sauce with it. The dish wasn’t overly flavorful but it was still pretty good. I ate half of my entree and saved the rest for lunch.

Pork Shoulder

The restaurant wasn’t crowded so the waiters weren’t anxious about clearing our table. Robyn and I had a great time talking and we were camped out at the table for about 2 hours after we finally finished eating. 🙂 It was a great time. We eventually decided to split a dessert. We split the delicious ice cream sandwich that had MINTY ice cream in the center! It was good. 🙂

I had a great time with my girl! It was a much needed girl’s night!