Ubuntu - not just an operating system...

Last night I had the pleasure of eating at Ubuntu, not to be confused with Ubuntu. Apparently this relatively new restaurant is getting high praise for its vegetarian menu, which is really quite diverse and also features a fair amount of items from it's nearby bio-dynamic garden.

The following pictures are only a couple of the dishes I got to try, not pictured is the amazing corn pudding with roasted peach. I've been having a good time with corn this summer, at the Front Porch I fell in love with grits, and I intend to learn how to make them when I get home. After reading Michael Pollan's Omnivore's dilemma, I got a bit corn-phobic for a while but now that revulsion has mellowed into a "if it's organic, it's okay in small quantities" take on the issue. Three food related goals for myself based on this summer's reading:

1. Eat sitting down. This may seem obvious, but I think that I do sometimes tend to eat while doing other things and just stopping to make eating its own task will go a long way towards slowing down my eating and making me appreciate what I'm eating more.


2. Avoid high fructose corn syrup. Sad but true: Orangina contains HFCS, as do a lot of other beverages. It's a small thing I can do, even if I am not great at cutting out all sugars, I can do this one.


3. Avoid meat from CAFOs. I will continue to eat meat (for now) but when I do it will be better quality, and supporting a local meat economy.

And now for some food-porn...(photos courtesy of Naomi)

cauliflower in a cast iron pot with our vadouvan roast-puree-raw-“couscous”, brown butter toast amuse bouche:


our carta da musica with truffled pecorino fresh-picked GREENS, lemon, ROSEMARY, trumpet chips:


and finally deep-fried egg with tartar sauce & black garlic smoked potato salad, grain mustard, roast cippolini onions:


Can't wait until I get an iPhone so I can blog about the food I'm having, while I'm having it!.

Stay tuned for my wine tasting notes, I will try to transcribe them when I am back in Canada next week.