On Friday Joel and I had a rare kid-free night out at a place we'd never been - The Emerald Restaurant. It's a tiny little Irish restaurant, run by the sweetest family. Joel and I got to relive a little bit of our trip to Ireland back in 2005, when I was pregnant with Carter. Actually, here's a little known fact - Carter's middle name is Sean. We wanted him to have an Irish middle name, since he traveled there "with" us. :-)
The restaurant may make actual Irish people groan - the decorations were rather stereotypical with shamrocks and leprechauns and whatnot, but it was fun nonetheless. I mean just look at it, isn't it cute?
The restaurant is in a house that was built quite far from downtown Austin back in the 1920s. The family turned it into a restaurant in 1984. The interior is small and cozy, with wood beams on the ceilings and creaky floors and everything. And Irish lace. LOTS of Irish lace!
We were sitting near the harp. Would you believe we heard him play a little Metallica? ON A HARP?
Dinner was something else - the owner brought out a **ginormous** tray of food and divided it tableside onto our plates. Here's the description of our dinner from their website:
You will start out with a basket of Irish Soda Bread and strawberry butter which is followed by our creamy Irish Potato Soup. Then a fresh Garden House Salad which has our Homemade Irish Red Dressing upon it. Then your server will present your Chateaubriand Beef Tenderloin to you and your guest which is accompanied by an assortment of fresh vegetables. For your desert, you will have our Irish Whiskey Cake.And our Chateaubriand course. Just one plate was enough for two!
Dessert was a super moist and super sweet whiskey cake.
Look how they packaged up the leftovers, too sweet!
This isn't a place we'd probably ever go more than once, it was quite expensive and we only tried it thanks to a Groupon. But it was fun to visit, and to reminisce about our trip. If you're at all curious, I did a scrapbook about our trip a while back which can be viewed
here.
And before I go - a photo of me from 2005, at one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, the
Cliffs of Moher, on the western coast of Ireland. **sigh**
I'm secretly hoping the next time I eat an "authentic" Irish dinner, it's in the dining room of my friend
Heather's house! Hmm, I wonder if she knows that... hee hee
Thanks for stopping by today. (and humoring me!) :-)