Restaurant Review!!! For Anniversary Time!!!!

It's been so long, in so many ways, and I have a meeting in a half hour, so this will be short, I just want to relay our newest awesome restaurant find!!

See, this past weekend was our FIRST WEDDING ANNIVERSARY!!! Can you believe it?! Because I can't. Granted, so much has happened in a year that it's flown by. New house, PhD, baby, and even with the pregnancy, all the other new stuff, improvements to the house, new job, etc... have made even the pregnancy fly by! So I guess what I'm trying to say is, in general, time is flying.

So, we like to step back and reflect. The Friday before our anniversary (because we are old farts, our anniversary is on a Sunday and we didn't want to go out late on a week night!) we tried out Sbraga:

If you watch Top Chef on Bravo, you'll recognize that cuddly bear! He won Top Chef Washington, D.C. a few years ago. He's from Jersey, so naturally, he opened a restaurant in Philly, because, let's rise above New Jersey ;) Just kidding New Jerseyans!

Anyway, this was my first time ever getting to eat in a restaurant (other than a crappy diner) where the kitchen was open:

This isn't a great picture of the kitchen, and of course it's not a picture of the chefs actually cooking, but they cook behind that bar on the right. See those chairs lined up in front of the bar?? Guess where we decided to sit!! Dinner and a show, baby!! It was so much fun, getting to watch a famous chef prepare our dishes (oh yes, he was there, cooking our meal!) and interacting with him and his line chefs as they did it.

I forgot to mention, we got there early and sat at the bar where the nicest bartender I've ever encountered told me that his wife just had a baby and so he was experienced at making non-alcoholic cocktails and proceeded to blow me away with a Fall-tastic, apple cider and pear fizzy drink that I will remember for the rest of my life!

Anyway, I didn't want to take pictures because I didn't want to seem like "that person" even though my motives were pure, I just wish I could show you how awesome it was being right in front of the kitchen, watching them prepare the food. The place was like a well-oiled machine, and everyone was super duper nice. I mean, not like I haven't had nice service before, but seriously, I was kind of dumb-struck at how nice everyone was.

In the same vein, I don't like taking pictures of my food, because I don't like looking like a tourist, but there was stuff like this:

Shrimp bisque where you pour the soup on at the table, the chefs plated with tweezers to get the perfect presentation, the food was RIIIIICH!! Pregnant bellies get upset easily, but I would do it again in a heartbeat!! Kyle got churros for dessert... Dude, they were the best churros I've ever had!! Kyle also got the beverage pairing with his menu, so he was good and toasty by the end of the night, and said that every drink complimented every dish perfectly... to which I replied 'I bet it did!' ;)

Anyway, the point is, I highly highly recommend it, it's now tied for first on our favorite Philly restaurant list, along with Sonata... which has unfortunately closed... as my favorite find in Philly, I was really really upset by this, but now can be a little less upset because we've found a new favorite spot.

Afterwards, the love of my life and I went home and passed out in food comas... BUT the next day...

WE ATE CAKE!!! I thawed our anniversary cake and it was surprisingly and wonderfully and reminiscently delicious... even more so than a year ago I think because you don't really taste your wedding cake on your wedding day... Seriously. So I won't go into all the nitty gritty details about how lovey dovey it was and all, but it's been a pretty awesome year, and as anniversaries go, I think this was was just right for us; pretty low-key, fun, full of love... and cake :)

I hope everyone else is doing well and had an awesome Thanksgiving. And for the married ladies, I'd love to hear how you spent your first anniversary and gift ideas, et cetera!

Dude!!

I just got an e-mail from my photog who said that not only is he submitting our wedding to Philadelphia Magazine (I'm gonna' buy a million copies!), but he also got wind that our wedding would be posted on a blog. Now, I already told you that The Knotty Bride is, at some point... eventually... I'm sure she's going to post our wedding, but he said 'no, this was some other blog.' So I went there this morning and sure enough, THERE IT WAS! Pretty crazy no??

Shut up, Ryan! It was a very unexpected surprise. Now, I have no idea how they got wind of it and that weirds me out a bit, but it's cool, nonetheless. I just hope it gets Ben some cred.

After attending our wedding, our DJ's wife, my awesome friend Julie, told her friend who is getting married soon how awesome he was and Julie's friend booked him! I joked with Ben that I got him the business and he said now he expects a certain number of clients from me every year (I think it was seven :)). That's why I cannot wait for the TKB post! Because she has a much wider audience, mostly in the Midatlantic area.

Speaking of Philly, I walked home from work yesterday and got inspired to take some pictures of the things I'll miss most about Southwest Philly when we move out of the city. I wanted to share them with you:

I'd love to know what this used to be, it's obviously been abandoned for quite some time and is hiding under an abandoned building. I love it.

My camera, auto-focusing.

This is just a different angle, there's a whole huge machine under here. No idea what it was or why it's still just taking up space down there.

Isn't this a fabulous backdrop?! I know it's not some people's cup o' tea, but I think it's gritty and fantastic.

This is my favorite building in the whole city. This building is why I originally wanted a warehouse wedding (but I would never have been able to find one that was suitable or not condemned and I knew Kyle would never go for it and it was just going to be logistically impossible... so I never even blogged about it. Kyle and I aren't badass enough anyway, well, maybe he is, but I'd never be able to fake it for a whole day.)

This 'structure' is part of the Crescent Iron Works factory. The company is still functional but not this part of it. My favorite thing about Southwest Philly is they're masters of having functioning businesses right next to abandoned, broken down... things. The above image, the abandoned building with the ivy growing all over it; that building is right next to the place where they keep the garbage trucks. Like, literally in the same lot. It's like they just let that old abandoned warehouse sit there in their parking lot like an old beat up pick-up truck on blocks.

Here's another example. I have no idea if this building gets used. I never see anyone in it, it looks like it's in a pretty advanced state of disrepair... who knows?! It's cool looking though.

So my favorite favorite spot in all Southwest Philly was recently finally cleared and cleaned up before I got the brilliant idea to photograph it, so, that was a huge shame. It was this horrible broken down brick structure with all different types and colors of graffiti all over it. Between the trash and the big chunks of building littering the structure, it was a mother's nightmare, which is probably why they finally took it down, but I loved looking at it.

(Sorry, I could not help myself!) Oh well. Hopefully these other random awesome structures will be around for weirdos like me to continue appreciating.

I think I came to a decision too as to what this blog will continue to be now that the wedding is over. You all know that DIY was a huge part of the wedding and so DIY will continue to be a recurring theme now that we're moving into our very own home. So if it's your thing, you can look forward to all the projects I keep wanting to steal off Design*Sponge ;) I guess you can classify that as lifestyle, because I'm sure I'll also be posting recipes stolen from Smitten Kitchen and hopefully one day baby ideas off whatever blogs talk about babies. I've been spending [way too much] time on Pinteret so I'm sure it will be a whole lot o' Pinteresting stuff. Thanks for stickin' around!