Happy Birthday Anna!

Last night, I went out with Anna, Meredith, Audrey, and Anna's sister Alison. We headed uptown again (every time I go, I sing "Uptown Girl" in my head) to Dandelion Market. Anna's b-day was Tuesday so this was her b-day dinner. Dandelion Market has a menu similar to some others I've seen on the list comprised of "small plates". Anna and I experienced this at Rooster's as well. The menu is made up of a bunch of little entrees, not your typical entree + side items, etc. We chose several entrees for the table and then waited to see if we wanted more, as instructed by our waitress who, to me, resembled Kristin Bell (maybe watching TOO much Veronica Mars).

Anyway, we chose the prosciutto crostini (from my Top 100 list), macaroni and cheese, aged cheddar fondue, baked potato croquettes, and the calamari to start. I didn't take pictures of all the dishes because they disappeared quickly, but here's a pic of mine:

We ended up getting seconds on the calamari and the mac and cheese. Let's go dish by dish - the calamari was lightly fried and served with a lemon aioli. It was FABULOUS. That was probably my favorite dish. The macaroni and cheese was very warm and hearty and quite good. However, I'm still partial to the mac and cheese at Rooster's. The potato croquettes were a little bland - nothing special. The fondue was quite good. The crostini? Definitely a Top 100 dish. The only bad thing about it was that there were only 4 on the plate. The crostini bread was warm and not too crispy. It's spread with fig preserves, then topped with goat cheese and prosciutto. You get that sweetness of the preserves, the creamy cheese, and then that salty prosciutto - wonderful!! I think everyone was impressed. I guess there were caramelized onions on the top, which I was a little worried about, but you didn't really taste them. Everything blended together nicely.

We did order the mozzerella flatbread and the roasted red pepper and artichoke dip as well. The mozzerella flatbread was nothing really special, but the dip was really good. As with the fondue, you get some little herbed bread squares, but the dip also came with crispy bread triangles - now, THOSE were good!

All in all, a delicious and exciting meal at the Dandelion Market. The only really disappointing thing was that they only had 3 choices for dessert and they weren't too spectacular-sounding. Maybe plan on stopping somewhere else for dessert if you go there for dinner if you're in a larger group. If it's just 2, you could probably just share one of them.

Onto the next!