Girl's night out

Friday!  Our date for an outing for the whole apartment :)

And a looooong day at school it was~  Well, I tabled for pl4y at the DUC, but I couldn't find the tables, so I left Ben all alone before finding Elaine the second hour D:  Sowwie >_<!''  

I had the daily special at the vegetarian station:  Tofu gumbo!  Since I was sitting in the shade, it was pretty cold by the time I was finishing it @_@

Tofu gumbo

A view of a partially hidden LabSci buildling

Elainnnnnney pooh!

I met Jennifer while tabling, and we headed to class together.  After both dozing off in class, I headed back home via metro.  Laundry, nap, and we were ready to head out!  Hup hup!

Debra had photo shoot pictures for LYNF (as did the other two, but it was at 11:40pm), so Anna parked ON the DUC sidewalk.  We sat inside, while people walked by and awkwardly looked into the windows at us.  Haha~

Whoooa, VIP on campus, yo!

Before we left home, we spent an hour or more looking up places to eat at!  We decided on Farmhaus, a restaurant focusing on organic food and fresh ingredients, combining them into fantastic dishes that pop with flavor!  :D

The girls at Farmhaus!

Farmhaus

3257 Ivanhoe Avenue

St. Louis, MO 63139

The restaurant is actually pretty small.  When we peeked into the windows, the place seemed full of patrons already.  We were asked if we had a reservation (which we didn't), so it was pretty lucky that we got a table within less than 10 minutes.  

The waiting staff were dressed in Cardinal jerseys (World Series champions, anyone?) or dress shirts with jeans.  There were a *lot* of them for such a small area @_@  I guess it's for a more personal interaction with Farmhaus?

Debra :)

We sat down to a wooden table with really heavy wooden chairs.  The tables were covered with tablecloth and a sheet of thick, brown paper.  On top of it, there were cloth napkins, wine glasses, and sets of fork and knives.

Anna :D

The kitchen was an open space, so you could see the chef prepare the food if you sat at their bar area.  But since we were more in the dining area, you could enjoy talking to one another while musing over the pictures and paintings hanging on the wall.  Elaine said they reminded her of Boston!

Elaine :3

The menus were printed on a long sheet of paper in Arial font.  Why not laminated and tucked away into those vinyl menus?  That's because Farmhaus' menu changes every day!  o_0  I guess it depends on whatever fresh ingredients they have and what the chef decides to make that day.

The waiter told us that the dishes were designed to share "family style."  That meant two entrees ordered per person!  That was kind of mind-boggling for college kids like us, since each dish was barely shy of $20 a piece.

After poring over the menu for ten minutes or more, we finally ordered.  Anna ordered two appetizers:  Nachos and Tepanade.  Elaine:  meatloaf, Debra: red grouper, and me: fluke.

The chef made the dishes at his discretion, so the dishes came out at different times (that's another reason the waiter suggested eating family-style!)  Anna's nachos and tapenade came out first.  Why nachos?  These weren't your usual tortilla chips drowning in cheese sauce!  Tonight's nachos were thinly sliced sweet potato pieces drizzled with a sweet and salty sauce, speckled with goat cheese, and sprinkled with savory bacon bites.  Yumm!!  Although only the top slice was loaded with cheese and bacon, the bottom slices had only a few smudges here and there.  But those few smudges were bursting with flavor ^^  Elaine actually liked it plain~

Sweet potato nachos

Next we tried the Onion and Apple Tapenade.  On pieces of super toasted crostini, there were caramelized onions, smears of ricotta cheese, and extremely thin apple pieces drizzled with a dark sauce.  I thought the sauce was chocolate, but it turned out to be a balsamic vinegar-based mixture!  :)

Although I tasted the sauce and cheese, I didn't try the tapenade dish as a whole, but Anna and Debra assured me it was super delicious:  savory overall but sweetened due to the caramelized onions.  The apples added a nice crunch along with the crostini!

 

Apple tapenade 

Debra's red grouper came out second.  Flaky fish (with a few bones) atop mashed potatoes with herbs mixed right in.  There was a flavorful chutney bursting with cranberries too!  I tried and loved that, and the fish was pretty good (tasted a bit like tilapia), but everyone assured me that the mashed potatoes were good.

Red grouper with mashed potatoes and cranberry chutney

The next dish that came out was the Fluke.  Was my choice to order seafood in Missouri, a landlocked state with only a dangerously polluted river nearby, a fluke itself?  The answer was no! :P  I actually ordered the dish, because I didn't know what "spoonbread" was.  Fluke is basically a flatfish, as we discovered while browsing the web using Anna's smartphone.  The piece of fish was a fillet smaller than the size of my palm, so it was pretty tiny.  But they blackened it, so the flavor was really strong :3  Nom nom!  The spoonbread turned out to be something like a milky, moister cornbread.  Very yummy, although I personally like the gritty texture of cornbread ^^'  The hearty veggies were just regular greens, but they were soaked in this oil-cheese sauce, so they were nicely salted.  Although the plate itself was ginormous (maybe for presentation purposes?), the indention in the middle for the food was quite small.  The spoon bread was probably eaten within 4 small/medium bites, but overall it was nom nom yummy :D

Fluke with spoonbread and hearty greens

All the dishes were super small; Debra finished hers in probably 2 minutes and then went out to talk to her mom on the phone, while we waited for Elaine's meatloaf to appear.  I was eating the black seasoning on the fluke, and it was really good :) 

When the waiter came to ask how everything was, we told him it was all awesome, just waiting for Elaine's food.  He made a sort of *Ahh!* face (>_o) and was like, ".. er, terrific!"  A minute later, he came to tell us he forgot to put in Elaine's order and that he was totally sorry.  Very honest guy.  I think other waiters would have just put it in late without telling the customer it was late.  

So then Elaine's meatloaf came in last.  It was bacon-wrapped meatloaf sitting on top of mashed sweet potato.  The whole thing had golden, crunchy, fried onion strips.  On the sides were some sort of marinara sauce with pearl onions.  Elaine and Anna said the meat loaf tasted like a big meatball, but it was still good.  We all agreed that the sweet potato was delicious!  I also tried the sauce, which was salty and sweet at the same time. 

Meatloaf wrapped in bacon atop mashed sweet potato puree

Elaine mused about how although the dishes were tiny, they were "just the right size."  Debra and I gave each other a look and were like, "Durr..." -_-''  Haha!  They were super tiny, and I was planning in my mind what I was going to eat when I got home.  But then the waiter reminded us dessert was still available!

While we were waiting for the entrees to come, another waiter was reciting the day's desserts to another table beside us.  Anna was listening to the waiter, and the patrons at the table were all kidding around about how she was listening and that the waiter might want to repeat the menu for Anna!  :)  Tee hee~  When they left, they strongly recommended the brownie.

So after a tough decision, Debra ordered the brownie (Rocky road) and Anna ordered the raspberry crostini.    The other choices were peanut butter cup and fried apple pie!

The Rocky Road arrived at our table with all its splendor.  It looked like an edible landscape!  A long slice of crusty, kind of hard brownie with two slices of salty, sweet caramel brittle and vanilla bean ice cream covered in a sort of marshmallow and caramel sauce.  I liked the crustiness of the brownie, enjoyed the vanilla bean-specked ice cream, and had a tiny piece of brittle.  Delish!  ^^

Rocky road:  brownie with vanilla bean ice cream and caramel salt brittle

After nibbling on Debra's rocky road, the waiter swept over with the raspberry crostata.  Before he could place it on the table, Anna reached out both hands and muttered, "Gimmee!"  Haha, so funny!  The waiter laughed and placed it into her outstretched hands in front of her :P

Wow.  This was just wow.  The waiter called it "phenomenal."  We called it "pheNOMenal"  ;)  The crostata wasn't too sweet, and the crust was soft, fluffy, and warm, contrasting with the cool and melting vanilla bean ice cream.  I'm usually not a fan of raspberry filling (tastes waxy.. like crayons to me), but the others loved it!  If I ever come here again, I really do hope this dessert will be on the menu that day!

Raspberry crostata (pheNOMenal!)

Anna thought it was so delicious that she stuck her face into the bowl and tried licking all of it off!  Don't worry, other than a couple in the corner, we were the last ones in the restaurant, hahaha!

Anna enjoying *every* last bit of her crostata, haha!

I'm guessing it was one of the patron's birthdays, so Farmhaus presented her beer with a little candle.  Cute!  I took a creeper photo, zooming onto her table, tee hee :P

I'm not the only food enthusiast ^^!

We walked out super happy with the experience.  Although we planned to check out The Cup, a cupcake bakery in Central West End, it closed at 10pm, the same time we finished dinner.  Oh well.. so we decided to go to Schnuck's for groceries!  :D

Elaine, Debra, and me

Actually, the real reason to go to Schnuck's was because I wanted to buy the cereal on sale that week.  Golden Grahams for $2 a box?!  Oh yeah!  ^__^  Although I had 9 boxes of cereal in my closet at home, I ended up buying 4 more boxes of Golden Grahams, 1 box of Smorz, and 1 box of shredded wheat.  So hard to resist  :')

Debra really liked the floral section.  She was amazed at the variety of colors.  So boys, that's a *slight* hint, yeah?  :P

While Debra frolics among flowers,

Anna and Elaine are mesmerized by the Halloween candy

Paparazzi shot!

We were so cold in the store that all of us kept hopping around the produce aisle.  Good thing it was near closing time, so no one saw us being weird!  :P 

Girl's night out ended up with setting up Elaine's TV back at the apartment while Debra snoozed away soundly on the futon.  Sleepy ending, but the night was really fun ^^  We haven't done this since the beginning of sophomore year when we went to our weekly bakery outings or eating at Wong's Wok.  Ahh, those days are long gone, but at least we can have little reminders here and there  :)  Love you girls!~

The lovely girls of my apartment!  Aww ^___^