Monk's Cafe, Capogiro (Friday, Oct. 19)

Here we go with a series of posts from our trip to Philadelphia and New York. We flew in on Friday, October 19, arriving at 5pm. We took a cab into Center City and J. took us to Monk's, an awesome Belgian cafe. I ordered the rabbit terrine, which I thought was fantastic. The terrine was a little crumbly and not very smooth, but I don't think the texture was a massive issue. The menu describes it as:

Rabbit Terrine house made terrine with rabbit, kriek-soaked dried fruit & pistachio nuts. With whole grain bread, capers & our "hunters sauce" made with belgian cassis lambic ale

I think the overall theme of the flavors of this dish is "nutty". The game-y flavor of the rabbit paired nicely with the pistachio and the whole grain bread. The capers added a salty touch to the entire dish. All in all, a great dish.

My second dish was the Brussels mussels (hehe *snort* hehe), described as "fumè, tomato, fennel, herbs de provençe & garlic". The fennel was the dominant flavor and I liked it a lot. It led the pack, but wasn't disturbingly overwhelming. It was a good-sized pot of mussels and the "sauce" was awesome.

To drink, I had the Geants Goliath, which the menu describes as:

Geants Goliath A tripel. Golden/Orange color. Medium body. A bit of sweetness in the front, but finishes somewhat dry. Hints of fresh stone fruit (peaches?). Yummy!

It was good, but finished too dry for my liking. Wikipedia has an entry on tripel.



After dinner, we stopped by Capogiro. Holy cow, this place is wonderful. I want it to come to San Diego. Oh, wait... they ship their gelato! Whoa... that could be deadly. We ended up there one more time before we left. I had the pistachio, dark chocolate, bacio (hazelnut/chocolate, white chocolate, and one of the coffee-based flavors. I think I had the pistachio twice. Incredible gelato and the flavors are very inventive.

Correction: D. tells me we went twice and since I had so many samples, I probably confused 6 flavors with three trips (2 flavors per cup). Oops.