Espresso Martini

My first experience of Crafters Barn this evening, and what an experience it was. From this delicious espresso stout based marting (£13.50 for two and you get the rest of the bottle of stout) to the double espressos we had afterwards everything was pretty good. Our starter were a half kilo of mussels for Jen and Belgian fish chowder for me. Both pretty big dishes to have as a starter but neither of us wanted to miss out on trying them. Mains were of course the hot lava stone steak. You pick a steak (both ribeye) and it comes on a very hot stone and you leave it to cook to your pleasure. Given it was Puddledub buffalo which we get reasonably frequently from the farmers market and are aware of its quality we pretty much cooked ours in a couple of minutes and then were left trying to eat without burning ourselves on the hot stone. Several people I saw left theirs on the stone and were eating off it but we didn't want any of it to overcook. Chips were good, I had big thick beer chips and Jen had the normal thin ones. The amount of salt might give the health concious a bit of a fright but it did make them pretty tasty. Bernaise sauce, rocket and parmesan salad, and a vegetable medley finished it off. A bottle of malbec went with the steak and I also had a bottle of Rodenbach sour beer from the extensive beer menu (with some very special things in it). A highly pleasurable experience and as it was on JEn it was even more satisfying :)

All the rest of the day was taken up by some freelance work in the hope that i can get a relatively free day tomorrow but as I sank into sleep at one in hte morning I was aware that I was going to pay for all the enjoyment in the morning...