Plainsboro

Tre Piani
First course
Chorizo [I would label it Spanish Style] with wild mushrooms in a slightly sweet tomato sauce. The sausage had a pleasant chewy texture and a nicely hot smoked flavor. Crab and Avocado salad was a large mound of crab blended with mashed avocado. The crab had a nice initial flavor, but the crab flavor was quickly lost to the dominant avocado. I do not mean that there was too little crab, just that its subtle flavor was overshadowed by the avocado. The crab avocado mound was served atop beautiful red tomato slices that had a refrigerated mushy texture and little flavor. This salad was served with a tarragon dressing.

Second course
We also had a penne with a tomato basil sauce. The sauce made with good flavorful tomatoes and had lots of fresh basil cooked in it, but was bland and characterless. The sauce did have a nice full bodied texture. The penne was pleasantly al dente, but it had a floury taste that I do not associate with great pasta. A bistro steak was wonderful. Ordered medium rare, it was cooked perfectly. The presentation was very attractive. It was sliced, showing perfect color. The slices lapped one another forming a crescent shape [over a generous serviing of wild mushrooms] and around a cylindrically shaped serving of excellent mashed postatoes. On top of the sliced steak was butter blended with fresh herbs. The thyme was especially flavorful. I would have preferred the butter to taste less salty. I don't know if the salty flavor was from the use of salted butter or was from the seasoning on the steak. This one quibble would not prevent me from ordering this delightful steak another time or dozen.

Dessert course
For dessert we shared a hot chocolate cake with chocolate gelato in a chocolate cup. The cake seemed to be made of a fresh phyllo style dough wrapped around chocolate and baked. The chocolate was molten, when you broke into the cake and multiple chocolates at different temperatures with the resultant different textures was a new experience.

Beverages
We drank bottled water with gas and each had a glass of pinot noir. It was too late for us to drink coffee, but it would have been a great accompaniment to the dessert.

Update Summer 2007
We had two dishes we loved, a lobster blt and a crisp spaghetti.