A Slight Detour on the
World Culinary Tour

Today, after a meeting on campus and before
I went searching for storm damage,
I was searching for lunch.
Hey, a girl's gotta know her priorities.

I had heard tales of a food cart that would
miraculously appear
on Kirkwood across from the Sample Gates
every Thursday.
This food cart is called the Happy Pig.

Hey, today is Thursday,
this should be great!

Only not.
I guess the weather precluded
the opening of a food cart.
Bummer, dude.

What to do.
Hmm.

Why, let's go to the other
and complete opposite culinary extreme!
Oh, why the heck not?

And thus I found myself at yet another
local B-town establishment that I had
been meaning to get to for the past two years.

Finch's Brasserie is just one of many local
restaurants that feature local ingredients made well.

As a bonus,
Finch's bills itself as Mediterranean-American cuisine,
so looking at it that way, I am still on track.
If you squint really hard,
and tilt your head to the left.
Really.

The lunch menu-
taken with the high ISO setting* for low light settings.
(Many thanks to the Foodie Daughter for pointing
out this setting to me)
*As this restaurant was set to low-light swanky mood settings,
all of these pictures were taken using the high ISO setting.

That is one massive wood-fired oven.

After perusing the menu,
I opted for the French Countryman's Lunch.
This was a choice of a soup or a salad and quiche.
As I am allergic to chicken,
all soups are necessarily suspect,
so I automatically chose the salad.
I also opted for the orange-balsamic vinaigrette.

Now the critique:
the vinaigrette was a bit heavy-handed,
but was other wise good.
The salad could also have benefited from
a sprinkling of a good bleu cheese.

I did opt for the duck terrine
to accompany my lunch.

This had pistachios and some sort of dried fruit and bacon
in it and was a heavenly spread on the toasted bread slices.

The quiche had tomatoes, mushrooms, asparagus,
spinach and some sort of cheese (sorry I spaced here).
This was good, though it might have used more cheese
and the other ingredients seemed to be a bit segregated.

However, the quiche was warm and welcoming,
especially on a day like today.

In the end I think my favorite thing was the
crusty bread and terrine.
But that is not a bad thing as it was all fairly good.

And what did my fancy-dancy meal set me back?

The French Countryman's Lunch was $8.50
Add in the terrine for $2.50
and my usual ice water (what, me cheap?) for $0.00
and the bill comes to $11.00
or $11.77 with tax.

I am so happy that I finally made it here.

I understand that the menu changes seasonally here.
I will be baaack.