Erte

02/17

Some friends of ours had recommended this place, so we went for our belated Valentine's Day dinner. It was definitely a nice place - the decor was modern, and they had a live band playing for us. We started off with the Erte Platter, which was a bunch of cheeses with bread, meat, apples, and grapes. Pretty good - my wife was surprised that they had hard goat cheese. Unfortunately, this was the best part of the meal for me. I had been pretty excited, since pretty much the entire menu looked appetizing, and was looking forward to the Spicy Stuffed Pork - pork tenderloin stuffed with spicy sausage with mashed potatos. However, I have to question where they get their definition of "spicy" from - this wasn't even Minnesota spicy! The pork was fine, but the sausage inside was dry, largely tasteless, and nowhere near the vicinity of spice. I've eaten green peppers spicier than this.

My wife's rainbow trout was pretty good, but not really worth the price it was commanding. They also had a bit of trouble getting my wife's drink right - it came back too strong several times. Overall, I was a bit disappointed.

BUT.... I should probably mention that we passed on dessert and instead went back to the hotel, opting to wander through the skyway to find something sweet. Somehow my wife's radar led her back to Zelo. Despite getting stuck out of the skyway and having to run back in the cold, this was a great culinary end to the evening. We held off on the molten chocolate cake, as we plan to go back to Zelo this Friday with my wife's family to (finally) celebrate her birthday, so we went with the gelato sampler. Yum-O! We got three significant scoops: pistachio, wild berry, and vanilla. All three were top-notch. We probably shouldn't have eaten it all, since there really was quite a portion, but we couldn't help ourselves. My wife also couldn't resist the hot chocolate. We seriously like this place.