August 12, 2015 Lunch – l’Olivier Dinner – Cliff Blaugrund’s 70th Birthday Party at Albuquerque Country Club

August 12, 2015 Lunch – l’Olivier  Dinner – Cliff Blaugrund’s 70th Birthday Party at Albuquerque Country Club 

I argued a motion in Santa Fe until Noon, so we were looked for a place to eat lunch near the Court of Appeals.  Scott wanted Chinese, we walked toward Galisteo and at the corner of De Vargas and Galisteo I saw folks sitting outside L’ Olivier, so we walked over and found them open for lunch.  We took a table on the spacious patio and looked at the menu.  There were only four or five lunch items but they all looked good.  I ordered a duck confit salad and Scott ordered Fish and Chips ($9.50 each). We both loved our meals. The duck confit was served on a large bed of baby arugula garnished with petitas ( roasted sun flower seeds) and the most wonderful candied rehydrated cranberries.  The duck meat was so tender it fell of the bone with a flick of my fork and the arugula had dark veins running in a network on each leaf.  It was a very special salad.

Fish and chips 

When I walked to the bathroom I saw Chef cooking in the kitchen and asked him, “Is the duck confit salad good?”  His reply was, “it is very good.”  He was correct.  We were trying to decide on a soup.  They were out o f cold cucumber soup, but brought us tastes of gazpacho.  Unfortunately it had too much black pepper for my taste.  I told the waitress to tell the chef to eliminate as much black pepper as possible from my salad. 

For a moment I felt like we were sitting on the patio of a small family bistro in the French countryside with the husband cooking in the kitchen and the wife serving and running the front of the bistro.  And we were, but for the fact that we were sitting beside the Santa Fe River in New Mexico.

Nancy and Cliff invited us to the large celebration of Cliff’s 70th birthday at the end of an Albuquerque Country Club.  We saw dozens of folks we knew.  I sat by Paul Silverman who is probably the oldest friend in the crowd.  He and his older brother, Harry, and my brother, Billy, car pooled to Sunday school in Fort Worth 55-60 years ago.  Paul told me Harry had died at the age of 60, which would have been 8 or 9 years ago.  We reacquainted with dozens of folks.  It was a great enjoyable evening for me and Suzette even made a new friend who sat beside her at dinner. 

The food theme was tacos.  There were large bowls filled with shredded beef, shredded chicken that had been sautéed  in spices and a bowl of fried fish.  Then there were five or six different salsas, including a mango salsa and a pomegranate salsa.  There was shaved cabbage and lettuce for garnish and a spicy guacamole and tomato wedge salad, plus raw vegetables such as carrot stick, Palm hearts, and olives.  I loved it.