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Blogs / On the Table / October 2009 / mmmmMetropolitan Monday

mmmmMetropolitan Monday

Last night, I started the Monday evening mantra* early: "I'm too tiiiired to cook..."

And I like to cook. Really. But we've had a roller-coaster couple of weeks and after a final, desperate campaign had just taken our kitchen back from a teenage horde. (Can one teen constitute a horde? I think so.) 

Options all seemed as dreary as more dirty pots and plates: we don't order pizza, we've just recovered from a series of questionable takeout Chinese experiences, we didn't own any bread to make grilled cheese sandwiches (that doesn't count as cooking), and we're out of cereal.
You may not believe this, but I picked up Salt Lake magazine—yes, the one I work for that had made me too tired to cook in the first place, and a print product I usually only read in its final form if I'm scanning for typos—and found the answer.

Monday is Locals Appreciation Night at Metropolitan.

We dropped in without a reservation and had a a lovely, thin-lipped glass of wine in front of us in mere minutes.

Metropolitan is, I think, considered an "occasion" restaurant, used for birthdays, anniversaries and celebrations of all kinds.

I say, reconsider.

Every Monday, the kitchen offers 3 courses for $30. You have a choice of appetizer, entree and dessert, you can bring your own wine, you can drop in. It's as easy on the wallet as going to one of those mid-priced chains, and way more than twice as tasty. Glen ordered the clams and mussels in a hot tomato broth, terrific with the new soft-pretzel rolls the kitchen is baking right now. I started with a huge arugula salad with bacon and slices of grilled papaya, and main courses of drunken chicken with a wheatberry pilaf and salmon on wild rice with asparagus and artichokes were followed by an amazingly light apple strudel and a trio of housemade ice creams: cherry, tangerine and sweet cream. Some of us—not me—were inspired to follow dinner with a glass of grappa. Glen likes grappa.

We were home by 8, with not a dish in the sink. Learn from my experience.

*A sound or words capable of creating transformation. In other words, effective whining.