Whoopsy - Valentine's Day

I never bloggered about what M and I did for Valentine's, which is probably extremely uninteresting to almost all of you. We actually wound up having two Valentine's dinners. We had decided that we were going to be trick the restaurants, and instead of going to a fancy place on Saturday, when they have their special, easy-to-prepare, feed-a-lot-of-people fast, Valentine's menus, we made a reservation for Aureole, one of our "we have to try this on a special day" places. The obvious plus side was that it was under-crowded, which I'm attributing to the economy and the over-crowdedness of Saturday. The downside was that we couldn't go all out on the alcohol side without regretting it at work the next day.
The meal itself was amazing - we tried the 5 course tasting menu, and it wound up being more like 8 with the amuse bouche, the sorbet, and the fun truffles we got after dessert (and all ladies received a white chocolate pumpkin-coffee cake for breakfast). The amuse bouche was a take on sushi (I feel horrible that I waited to blog, for I do not remember the deliciousness of all the courses).
Now for a description (all caps means I pulled it straight from the Aureole website).

First Course: JAPANESE HAMACHI SASHIMI
SEA URCHIN, CUCUMBER, YUZU CITRUS, BABY RED SHISO, HITACHINO BEER (this was amazing and my first time to have sea urchin - sooooooooo goood)

Second Course: POACHED FARM EGG
WINTER BLACK TRUFFLE, WHITE CORN GRITS, PROSCIUTTO DI PARMA, TOMATO POWDER (clearly my favorite, it tasted like the most refined eggs benedict ever - except with grits!)

Third Course: hmm - all I remember was a delicious fish course, which had an unbelievable sauce

Fourth Course: PRIME NY STRIP LOIN with BARLEY GRAINS, PORCINI MUSHROOMS, CREAMED SPINACH, CARAMELIZED ONION JUS - (yumm, and surprising, since the spinach was pureed and painted onto the plate)

Sorbet: GREEN APPLE-FENNEL GRANITE CARDAMOM CHANTILLY (so much better than it sounds - I promise)

Dessert: A delicious date cake

I need to take a break now, and tell you about our dinner the night of Valentine' s day in the next post.