La Caille- The Quail

Tuesday was Mardis Gras!!! It was also the day that I went to a French restaurant in Salt Lake with other kids from my school. It was SOOOOOOO good!!!It's a five star restaurant, so we had to be very proper. I was so nervous that I was doing things wrong! :) We had a five course meal. I forgot my camera, or I would have taken pictures, but I will try to describe the deliciousness to you!

The first course is call an hors d'oeuvres, or appetizer. For this we had an escargot (snail). It was actually not as gross as it sounds! To eat it we had a tool that would clamp the shell so you could hold on to it. Then you used a tiny three pronged fork to pull the meat out of the shell. The texture was kind of weird, but it tasted like garlic. They drench it in garlic butter, so that's the only taste really. I was soooo nervous to actually eat it, but I ate the WHOLE thing!!! One of my friends actually saved her shell!

The second course was pineapple sorbet, which is basically sherbet, to cleanse the palate so everything else doesn't taste like the escargot. It was really good. There was a small ball of it about the size of a table soccer ball in a very short glass. We used a smallish spoon for this. When we were choosing which utensil we were supposed to use (there were 7 or 8 at the beginning of the meal) you go from the outside in, and the dessert spoon was laid vertically across the top right under the bread plate, which had its own special knife on it.

After the sorbet we had a salad. There were a lot of different kinds of lettuce in it, some more bitter than others. It had a special cheese on it that I had never tasted before, but I don't know the name of it. It was very strong, and had an interesting flavor. It also had a tomato and some onions on it, topped with ranch dressing. It was so good!

Next was our entree. We had a choice between a chicken dish, a salmon dish, or a vegetarian pasta dish. I ordered the chicken. It was really good. The chicken was so tender. It was a melt in your mouth type thing. You hardly had to chew it at all. It was in this creamy white sauce. It was kind of like alfredo sauce, but a softer creamier taste. There were also two baby red potatoes that had been roasted, I think, along with some tomatoes, and fresh cut green beans. It was really good, but I got full towards the end. I don't think I ate more than half of it.

At the end we had a desert called Bananas Foster. It's basically vanilla ice cream, bananas, caramel, and rum en flambet (on FIRE!!!!). Don't worry, I did not consume any alchohol. It all burned off. The way they served it was really cool. They brought out lipped cups with three cubes of ice cream in them. Then they put the caramel and bananas in a long flatish gravy pitcher type thing and poured a little rum on it, and set aflame. The coolest part though, was after that. They came over and litterally poured the whole flaming substance over your cup and in the cup, and on the plate the cup was on. It was so cool to watch! There would be caramel flowing from the container with fire down and around it. Then it would flame a bit after it hit, and then it would stop. I could feel the heat coming off the flames right in front of me. I was careful to make sure I scooted back a bit before the waitress did mine.

So what happened is, the fire burned off the alcohol, but left the taste. Just so you all know, rum is DEESCUSTING!!!! It was really bitter, like cough syrup, but worse. It was like, I put it in my mouth and it was instantly bitter and made my tongue tingle. It was gross! I did eat the ice cream though. The bananas and caramel had had rum poured on them directly, but the ice cream still tasted good. Kelly really liked it though, so lets hope she doesn't go alcoholic! :)

La Caille was also amazingly decorated. The grounds were gorgeous, and there were bunnies and peacocks walking around. The first thing I noticed when we came in, was a huge walrus head on the wall. Then there was this little hallway we waited in, before we were seated, next to the bathrooms. Along the hall of the bathrooms they had pictures of all their waiters and waitresses, that have ever worked there. The entry way to that hallway had mirrors on all sides of it, so as you walked through you could see yourself in five different mirrors. Then we walked up a spiral staircase to get to our table. Each floor had a different dining room, and we were on the second floor. It was so cool. One part of the ceiling was glass with a picture behind it. The downstairs hallway had a painting on the ceiling. I can't remember what those are called! :)

Each table had a flower in a vase and a candle for the center piece. Our candle was very entertaining. First, a big chunk of wax fell off, and then one of the girls at our table stuck it back to the candle. Then big chunks kept collecting on that side and the candle was tipped that way a little bit. by the end of the meal, our candle was only about 3/4 of an inch tall, when the table's next to us' candle was still the same height I remembered it being at the beginning of the meal! It was crazy!

La Caille was so fun!!! I was very glad I went, and the food was deliciouso!!! Of course, the bus rides were almost as fun as eating gourmet french food! :) And I didn't even have to miss school! We left right after school was over, and we got home at about nine thirty. If any of you get a chance to go there, I would highly recommend it!!!