volare - part 2 (the outcome/review)

date: september 29, 2005
bet: will olive make out with mason in his office?
stakes: lunch and one week of chauffermanship (if olive loses)
winner: olive
loser: mason
destination: volare (201 east grand)
cost: $42

olive: so it was friday afternoon and my stomach was in knots. would i actually go through with it? i did a quick survey lap around the office. this was it.

i walked into mason's office, closed the door and casually said, "hello. i'm here to win a bet." instantly mason's face turned tomato red. "are you serious?" i was serious alright. and so i frenched him. i'll let him give the dirty details if he wants, but VICTORY WAS MINE!!! not only had i won the bet, but i had made mason blush, which is not an easy task. quite overwhelmed with excitement, i returned to my office to contemplate the fantastic win, leaving mason in complete shock.

for my victory lunch, we went to volare. i couldn't decide between soup or salad, so mason agreed to order salad, while i would get the minestrone, and we would share. the soup was very delicious and filled with vegetables, as minestrone should be. for my entree i ordered the risotto con pollo mixed with saffron and peas. delicious. the chicken in the dish was very tender and the risotto was just sticky enough. peas are generally one of my less favorite vegetables, but they complemented the dish nicely. and as agreed, i had a few bites of mason's mixed green salad, which was pretty standard and tasty. they also served bread, which i dipped in a self-made puddle of olive oil, parmesan and pepper on my bread plate. yum!

i suspect that the food tasted particularly good because it was mixed with the sweet satisfaction of winning a very exciting bet.

mason: exciting may be the understatement of the month (i'd say understatement of the year, but last month i heard someone say that our president was a douche). when olive said that she made me blush, she wasn't kidding. i still cannot for the life of me believe that she actually frenched me in my office. it was just plain great. she adhered to all the ground rules and seemed to genuinely be enjoying herself. she even had that 'i just brushed my teeth in preparation for this moment' taste.

so i had to take olive somewhere extra nice for her victory repast (she definitely deserved it) and volare was just what the doctor ordered that day. what i ordered that day was the fruit de mare risotto, and man was it tasty. per olive's description, there's a very fine line when it comes to risotto, and this dish walked it impressively. the seafood was fresh and abundant, and the sauce (or as my grandpa says, the gravy) was exceptional as well. the soup and salad were perfect and the olive oil/parmesan/pepper dip could have stood on its own in meal town. my one and only complaint is water-related, which as you know by now is one of my hot buttons. in this particular case, each refill of water came complete with an inordinate amount of ice -- a practice that continued until there was barely any room for actual liquid h2o. and i was exceptionally thirsty that day for some reason (most likely french-induced). luckily, olive donated her water to the worthy cause that was, for the first time in more than a month, on the losing end of the bet.

so all in all, volare is highly recommended. it's a bit on the pricey side, especially if you share the over-ordering problem that both olive and i openly admit to, but well worth the price of admission.

and on a separate but related and equally exciting note, this post brings us completely up to date. no more living in the past on this blog. we've got our eyes and mouths (for eating) aimed at the future, and at least one of us is bound and determined to inch his way back to the four-bet milestone where he will find a young lady wearing driving gloves, talking in an english accent and addressing me as sir as she traverses this fair city of ours in a very dirty toyota matrix with an incredibly proud passenger seated in the back directing her every move.

to celebrate this turning point, we present you with identity clue #2: