...I go all in: I choose this meal and this order, and I choose you, the person across from me, to share it with. There's a beautiful intimacy in a meal like that. ~ Anthony Bourdain

The Time: 6:30pm on a crisp 15c/60F evening
The Theme: a potluck with beer pairings
The Company: 5 weightlifter/food lovers
The Place: a quaint home near North Park, where a beautiful celebrity cat lives.

Like old school friends, people whom you train (gym) with daily, eventually become people you share intimate aspects of your life with.  Sometimes it's about an incident of indecent exposure, in between sets of squats, other times it's conversations about childhood experiences and kitchen family trade secrets, while sitting across from one another eating.

While a good meal has the power to silence the loudest rooms, bring back the past and humble you all at the same time, it's often the conversations surrounding the meal, that I revel in most........that and documenting the experience.  >:D

On this night though, things were a little bit different.

The evening didn't include a camera, adjusting settings to the lighting or fidgeting with the food for better composition.  In fact, we were so immersed in eating, talking about our dishes and laughing over silly things, that even phones were no where to be seen on the dinner table.

Eventually, we did realize that it might be a good idea to at least snap a picture of some of the beers with each dish, so that we could compare in the future.

The food:
Zuni Cafe's caesar salad (Thank you Cellar Door for this one!)
Glass noodles with Haricot Vert (longer thinner green bean), Chinese sausage & grilled onions
Hot & Sour soup (nothing like the typical restaurant style, much meatier and amazing layers of flavor)
Sisig (pig ear, jowl & belly grilled, then cooked in butter.)
Roasted Brussels tossed with Kimchi
Chili
Flourless chocolate cake

The beers:
Modern Times Fortunate Islands hoppy wheat
Hess Ficus saison, Bootlegger Far Out IPA
Full Sail Old Boardhead Barleywine (2008)
Dogfish Head World Wide Stout
Brouwerij Van Steenberge Cherish Raspberry Lambic.

So while the photos aren't too pretty, and a lot of the details are missing, it was nice unplugging a bit for the night and just eating and drinking to our heart's content.

Thank you K. for opening up your home!