Early Valentine's Day at Millennium

Millenium Dessert, originally uploaded by mysterybridgers.

Millennium restaurant in SF is a great upscale vegan restaurant that we go to only for special occasions. We had not been in a while and we remembered that they have an aphrodisiac prix-fie dinner every Sunday in the month of February (every other month it is only the Sunday closest to the full moon). The dinner was amazing! I forgot our regular camera and this sad camera phone picture does not do the food justice. We also were so engrossed in our eating that we forgot to take pictures until dessert.

First of all, along with dinner I had a fabulous cocktail called the "Square Root" which had mint, blood orange, acai, vodka, prosecco and some other stuff I don't remember. It was really good! Hubby had a root beer and the server commented on how it was a "root kind of evening." Hee hee.

The dinner started with the course they called "L'Ingrigue." It was a Grilled Avocado Salad with toasted cumin and blood orange aioli, watercress, shaved fennel and oregano, sea vegetable caviar and zaatar. The grilled avocado was really nice and smokey and anything avocado is good in my book. The sea vegetable caviar is killer and I could eat it on everything. It pops in your mouth.

The second course was called "Le Desir" (are you noticing a theme) and was a Chanterelle Mushroom Gratin with pimento scented leek cream and toasted crostini. This was the tastiest thing ever. Hubby said it tasted like a really tasty gravy, but I thought that it was much more than that. I could tell it had lots of mushrooms, garlic, thyme, and truffle oil in it in sort of a creamy sauce. One day I will try to recreate this one.

The third course was called "La Seduction" and we had two choices so we got one of each and switched half way. I had Coconut-Lemongrass-Fava Green Risotto with peanut and sweet soy glazed tempeh "brochette" (a fancy name for tempeh on a stick), king trumpet mushroom tempura, star anise pickled pineapple, watercress and mint salad. Hubby had Smoked Cherry Chard and French Lentil Roulade with crisp olid oil crust, black chanterelle and merlot reduction, meyer lemon and rosemary roasted artichoke and potato gratin, fried capers, grilled endive and blood orange. The fried capers were very tasty!

Finally the meal finished with "La Petit Mort" which was a Brown Sugar Pecan Glazed Orange Cake (pictured above) with mint julep ice cream and kishu mandarins (they were so tiny and so sweet and tasty). This dessert was served with a drink called "Love Potion Number 9," which is just pomegranate juice and lemonade, but still very good in spite of its simplicity. This was by far the best dessert I have had at Millennium. The mint julep ice cream was surrounded by chopped cocoa nibs, which I had never had before, but are quite tasty. I was way too full to finish my entire cake so half of it went home with us and we shared it for breakfast with coffee the next morning as the sun came up over San Francisco. Wonderful!