January 13th 2012: Dinner at Cuchi Cuchi, Cambridge

Tonight after work, I had a dinner appointment with a friend in Cambridge at the Cuchi Cuchi Restaurant. I left work early, but somehow the cards were not in my favor, and I kept getting stuck in traffic. I had already made a reservation earlier in the week, but I wasn't even close to my destination when the reserved time arrived. I made a call in the car, and the woman at the other end of the line told me that she would put my name on a priority list.

By the time we actually arrived at our destination, we were already 90 minutes late. To make things worse, we could not find any parking, and after a few minutes of driving around in vain, we decided to resort to valet parking instead, which cost us $12.

Once inside the restaurant, it was really crowded with people, and we thought that we would have to wait a long while to get a seat, but as it turned out, as we were on the priority list, we got our seat almost instantly after entering. This place is really artsy, with all the waitresses dressed in the garb of "Moulin Rouge" , so to speak.

This restaurant is kind of a tapas place, although the food served is not Spanish but from all over the world. We had the special Thai soup which had coconut milk, lemon leaves, spinach, shrimp, scallops and turnips, which was really good.

We order 4 other small plates from the menu. The chicken liver pate came served with crispy bread, while the Caspian Heaven, consisting of salmon roe, crispy oysters, sour cream, roasted fingerling potatoes and champagne sauce was extremely delicious. The seafood filled avocado was really artistic, with a paper crane stuck behind the fanciful avocado stuffed with crabmeat, scallop and octopus, with lobster tail on the side. The Duck a l'Orange Crepes were an interesting and tasty concept as well, complete with citrus and fennel vinaigrette.

Chicken Liver Pate

Caspian Heaven

Seafood filled avocado

Duck a l'Orange Crepes

When we were done, it was not quite over yet, and we got the Le Gateau Nantais, consisting of almond/rum cake with poached pears, which wasn't too bad, although the rum was a little bitter at times.

With that, my friend decided that she was too tired to go watch a movie after dinner, so we called it a day at that.