Piedmont II - Foster Street, Durham

For date night last Friday, my husband and I decided on Piedmont. It's only a 5 minute or so drive and we knew being earlybirds that we'd have no problem getting a table. For those who may be unfamiliar with Piedmont, it's one of the many home-grown Durham restaurants that utilizes local and organic ingredients. This appears to not be just a fleeting trend in the area, but one that's caught national attention and here for the long run.

Their menu changes nightly, as you can see in their blog-format webpage, but they usually have staples there for a week or two with only a few items changing nightly. The entrees tend to have a somewhat Italian influence and usually have a homemade pasta or risotto. I've enjoyed all of the meals I've had at Piedmont and Friday's was no exception.

We started by sharing a cheese plate of two NC cheeses (green hill and new moon both of cow's milk). They were served with toasted hazelnuts, local peach jam and a heartly raisin-nut bread. Everything was great. I think I might have enjoyed a more neutral bread that allowed the cheese to be a little more of a star, but we ate every bite nonetheless.

For my entree, I had the risotto with roasted zucchini, tomato confit & fresh mozzarella. This was a large platter filled with tender risotto, perfectly cooked zucchini and onions and gobs and gobs of wonderful mozzarella cheese. I seriously loaded up at least 5 or six cheese only bites on my fork!

My husband had the local pasture raised ribeye with bearnaise sauce & pommes frites. His steak was perfectly seasoned (though a little on the rare side since the waiter never asked how he wanted it) and had a lovely light char taste. The fries were awesome. They were light, potatoey and crispy all at the same time. They were perfectly cooked fries both inside and out (which can be hard to find in my opinion).

We shared a chocolate torte with caramel sauce and a vanilla semifreddo. Translation: Rich, dense dark chocolate cake with caramel sauce and creamy vanilla ice cream. It was heavenly. It was rich, but not too sweet and it was the perfect ending to our meal.