George's Garage – Ninth Street, Durham

For date night on last Friday, we ventured to George's Garage. I was craving seafood, and knowing our remaining date nights are dwindling, we opted to spend more then usual. While I love Blu, the menu is rather limiting to me these days due to my restricted diet and my distaste for oysters.

It was early (5:30ish) and it was nice and quiet, relatively empty save for a few of the after work folks at the bar. We were seated, given our menus and told the specials by our fantastic waiter, Patrick. Seriously he made our seemingly average experience extraordinary. We opted for our appetizer and entrees from the specials menu.

For our appetizer we ordered a seafood platter. This consisted of fried calimari, two seared large sea scallops and two jumbo sauteed shrimp. My hubby ate most of the calimari and one of the shrimp. I ate the scallops, the other shrimp and a few pieces of the calimari. My only complaints about our entire meal stem from this dish. The scallops and shrimp were almost room temperature. Other then that, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The cocktail sauce and tartar sauce were fantastic. The tartar sauce differed from the typical mayo-based, relish over-run stuff you're used to. It was creamy and filled with what seemed like a mild minced onion or perhaps even some celery. I loved it.

For my entree I ordered the pan seared red snapper served over shrimp lemon thyme risotto. The snapper was tastefully seasoned, perfecctly cooked and served on top of a generous pile of arborio rice with healthy chunks of shrimp. The risotto was a little off in it's texture, not the creamy stuff I'm used to, but it was still very tasty. This entree was a steal at around $12!

My husband had the NY strip with mushroom jus. It was served with homemade fries and broccoli. He said it was fantastic. For dessert we shared bread pudding (he'd never had it) with caramel sauce and vanilla bean ice cream. Typically I order chocolate desserts, but this was completely satisfying and I also thought it was a steal at only $4.

As I mentioned before, the entire experience was lifted to another level by a fantastic, informative waiter, who urged us to ask for him by name when we returned post-baby. That, we will definitely be sure to do!