I have to blog about the phenomenal dinner Dave and I had last night. Last night we celebrated "our Christmas" together and since we had a good coupon, went to Anotherthyme, here in Durham. We walked in, about 7:45 and it was mildly bustling, although quite a few empty tables. We waited to see the host. And waited and waited. We must have waited 5 minutes. Finally a waiter, who had seen us from the beginning and went around to collect a tip or two from an empty table before greeting us, came over. Upon our disgruntled looks, he did apologize for the wait and explained that they were short on staff (read: one waiter, one bartender and a guy in a sweatshirt), there had been a death in the staff and that no one wanted to work. Lucky us. I asked if service was going to be slow and he said no. We thought for a quick minute about going somewhere else, but decided to get seated. While we waited for our waiter to come back, Dave called three other local restaurants to see if they were open. Next to us, a man and his son had asked the bartender for some bread. After waiting a few minutes, they called our waiter over and said they were still waiting. Neither he nor the bartender came back with their bread. In the meantime, upon finding out that the other restaurants were closed, ordered cocktails. The man next to us went over to the bar to talk to the staff about his lack of service and still came back with no bread. We tried our drinks: they were horrible. At that point, in figuring we were going to be spending quite a bit of money and wanted to get a nice dinner for our money, just left.

We went around the corner to Pop's, which had four times the amount of staff working and was warm and light and bustling. We got a high top table next to the bar, and the bartender, who only had two other guests was our own personal waiter.

We started off with coctails which were way better than our first round (really delicious in fact) and an appetizer of baked stuffed mushrooms with NC lump crabmeat, spinach, roasted garlic ricotta cheese, reggiano and truffle cream. They were DIVINE. Every bit as good as they sound.

For dinner I had angel hair pasta with smoked chicken, green onions, banana peppers and a bacon cream sauce. Everything was cooked perfectly and was absolutley delicious. Dave had grilled pork scallopini over blue cheese polenta and asparagus. He had three large portions of pork which were all grilled in their wood fire oven and were great. He loved the polenta.

For dessert, we shared two cannoli with a cranberry pistachio sauce. It wasn't my favorite as I prefer chocolate in pretty much any dessert, but Dave loved it. Dave also finished with his favorite, a glass of sambucca.

We were stuffed, but tremendously happy with our decision to leave Anotherthyme, and go to Pop's. We have never been disappointed with Pop's and it will continue to be one of our favorite restaurants to go to!

Comments

[Jeni]

Pop's is definitely a favorite of ours too! We've never been disappointed by the food or the service! I was underwhelmed the last time I went to Anotherthyme (only my second visit). I found their famous almond fried chicken to be bland and overcooked...not great.

I'm glad you were smart enough to salvage your dinner date and trot down the street for good food. Happy holidays!