I needed to get a hair cut today, so I headed down to Oneida’s financial district. OK, so I suppose most people call it “downtown”, but besides the banks and a few anachronistic shops there isn’t much. Afterwards, I stopped in at Napoleon’s cafe for lunch. I always mean to get down there more often as it’s a nice little place with an interesting menu. While there, I noticed that today was their monthly day (third Friday of every month) to be open for dinner. It turns out what they do is have a theme night, and the “secret” ingredient this time was berries. I mentioned it to Dad and since we were both interested in trying something different we decided to put off our near weekly visit to El Canelo. I was a bit surprised Dad was willing to try it since he always makes fun of the Geico commercial about the roast duck with mango salsa, because he doesn’t like the mix of fruit and meat.

The first course (of five) was a cold raspberry soup. It looked a bit like Jello with Dream Whip, but that was the exact wrong thing to be thinking about when trying this stuff as it was savory. I don’t know, but I don’t think onion and raspberries really work well together. I did manage to adapt to it a bit, and eventually finished it. The next course was a fruit salad on a bed of lettuce. It was topped with raisins, bleu cheese, and a honey vinaigrette. It was good, which is why I was disappointed that it was so small. The appetizer was a skewer of chicken with a berry barbecue sauce. It was… interesting, but not great. Sometimes the mix of sweet and savory works, sometimes it fails miserably, but this was just ‘eh’. The main course was a plate of pork tenderloin with a berry chutney, swordfish with mango salsa, fried escarole and rice. The tenderloin/chutney worked well, but my last bite had a whole bunch of that chutney flavor that I don’t even think should be classified as edible. I let Dad have my swordfish as he had given me his chicken. He said it was good. The sides were relatively normal. Dessert was strawberry shortcake, which was very good, super sweet while still having lots of strawberry flavor.

So points for bravery all round, but the execution was not the best (and not cheap). Still, I’m interested in seeing the menu for next month.

[Joe]

The Mets won their sixth game in a row, scoring 10 runs on 17 hits, both season highs. More importantly, they’ve continued their streak of always winning when we attend a home game.

[Joe]