New Jersey...

I'm teaching in Berkeley Heights, NJ this week. The hotel where I'm staying is in Basking Ridge, NJ, and there's an interesting Italian place down the street called "Ciao." It's an upscale-but-casual place. I grabbed a seat at the bar rather than a table for one.

I started with a glass of Pinot Noir that was suggested by the bartender, Meredith. After I decided on tuna for dinner, she suggested a white made from Malbec. The Malbec grape usually makes a full-bodied red, but this was wine was made from "skinless" Malbec grapes (her description). I think what she meant was the wine is pressed and the skins are immediately discarded. With red grapes, the skins are usually left in contact with the juice, so the tannin in the skin enriches the wine. It was a good choice, full and fruity.

Apologies for the quality of these photos; they're from my phone and lighting was poor

My first course was cream of asparagus soup:

It was subtle, with thin slices of asparagus throughout.

Next was the main course, seared tuna with a ginger-soy sauce:

That's an arugla and onion salad on either side, grilled asparagus on top, and the tuna was sitting on top of a scoop of wasabi mashed potatoes. The tuna was perfect, the salad and asparagus wonderful. The wasabi mashed potatoes were just a bit odd to my taste. They weren't bad, I just didn't quite know how to process the taste at the same time as the tuna. I didn't eat all that much of the potatoes, which was my rationalization for dessert. I don't totally subscribe to Sajini's theory that dessert is most important, but I don't want to be a glutton, either.

I asked Meredith to pick between a brownie cheesecake, tiramisu, and orange mousse, and she suggested the Orange Mousse:

My guess is that the mousse was the only one of the three made in-house. It was a winner, a tasty combination of orange with blackberries.

I capped off dinner with a cappucino.

Overall, this was a good meal. Given the overall dearth of places to eat near here, I may go back and try Ciao's pizza later this week.