Malinda Lo

I can’t believe it has been a month since I posted my last Photo Friday! Today I’m happy to share with you photos from my wedding dinner, which was at El Paseo, a wonderful French restaurant in Mill Valley, CA. If you’re in the area, do make a reservation — the food is phenomenal.

So, my ability to take photos of food in dimly lit restaurants is still not so great. In fact, the pics do absolutely no justice to how delicious the food was, but it’s all I’ve got. We had four courses plus dessert; each course had two options.  We also had an amuse bouche to start off with, but the photos of that turned out so poorly that I haven’t included them. I’ll tell you about it though: it was a warm-and-cold fresh pea soup served in a shot glass. There were whole peas on the bottom (yummy!) and creme fraiche on the top (mmm).

Next was the first course, for which there were two options:

Heirloom tomato salad

Big Eye Tuna Tartare with Wasabi Caviar and Poached Egg

The photo above is a little too bright (it was the only one I used a flash for), but at least that means you can see that amazing poached egg on the upper left. It looks like a purse! How did the chef do that?! (FYI, John Lo is my brother. Shout out to my brother!)

Next, for the second course we all had a fabulous sweet corn soup. It was to die for.

Soup de Maies

For the third course there were two options. One was a Dungeness Crab Croquette, which turned out too blurry in the photo so I haven’t uploaded it. The other choice was this truffle risotto — a savory, earthy, cheesy treat.

Forest Mushroom Risotto with Truffles

For the fourth course, there was fish or steak to choose from. The filet mignon was the most melt-in-your-mouth filet I have ever had. Wow. (The photo is bad but I have to include it because, again, wow).

Angus Beef Filet Megnon with Sauce Madeira

The other option was this fish, which the menu said was ocean trout but really looked a lot like salmon. I was a little confused. Also, it had the disadvantage of being served at the same time as the filet, which basically kicked every other course to the curb.

Pan Seared Ocean Trout with Turnip and Seaweed Sauce

Lastly, we had two desserts to choose from, a chocolate cake with chocolate sorbet (the photos were bad), or this scrumptious apple tart:

Apple Tart with Vanilla Ice Cream

We chose to forgo wedding cake because, frankly, I’d rather have pie. The apple tart was fantastic.

Hope you all have a great weekend filled with lots of good food!