Weeknight dinner at 246

I know you are surprised to hear that we ended up at 246. Right, sure. It's funny that we often end up going out the nights that I'm home early. You would think that I would take advantage of being home earlier to dig through the freezer, defrost something, and cook it.

But alas.

So when we arrived at 246, Drew came over to say hello. He mentioned that he had completely redone the toast section of the menu and that we should try it out. So, of course, we listened.

To start, the ceci pea puree toast arrived with anchovy vinaigrette, local spring chives, parmesan, and chiles. It is absolutely divine, and I love the new format where you just pick it up and shove it into your mouth.

The balance of ceci and anchovy is just wonderful.

Second to arrive were the pork rillette toasts with beet pickled farm eggs, whole grain mustard, and local parsley.

Poor pork rillettes, to arrive after the ceci peas. Anything after that dish would have paled and the rillettes couldn't stand up to the bold and aggressive flavors of the ceci and anchovy. Of course, the pork rillettes are good, but have never been my favorite.

Third were these spring pea toasts with housemade ricotta, mint, chiles, evoo, radish and arugula. So messy but quite good. The arugula was thick stemmed and hard to eat. The spring peas were divine.

Keeping in mind with the spring theme, I got this spring onion soup. Deee-licious! Served with creme fraiche, croutons, evoo. So good.

For my "dinner", I got two delicious meatballs. Though I was quite dismayed when they arrived to see them completely covered with red pepper flakes. Sometimes, I find there is a heavy hand with the chile flakes here at 246, but usually I just avoid it. I had had an overly spicy tomato before, but it wasn't nearly as covered as this one was.

So I suffered through the first meatball but when I reached the second I just couldn't take it anymore. While I sat there sadly staring at my spicy meatball, Brenda (our bartender) came over and asked what was wrong.

So she brought me another, non-spicy one! Yums.

Drew later came to check on my non-spicy meatball. I showed him a picture of my spicy meatball. He might have just been humoring me, but he did commiserate with me. I'll ask for not-spicy next time just to be sure.

Even though we were already stuffed, we ordered this strawberry sorbet, and I'm so glad we did. It was so deliciously good.