Friday night out in Clermont

Well, Friday was the last day of the summer term, so we decided to celebrate a bit.

Plus, Melissa had plans for most of the weekend, so we claimed Friday night as ours. There were sundry errands to run, and then we went to Ruby Tuesday for a drink. Not because we particularly like Ruby Tuesday--in fact, there were several people there who reminded why we don't frequent the big chain restaurants--but because one of my students had given me a gift card at Christmas, and we still had five bucks or so left on it. Well, drinks turned into drinks and an appetizer: they have a new avocado quesadilla that's tolerably good.

From there, it was dinner at the new Italian place in town, Fresco. The food was tolerably good. There was a touch too much red onion in the bruschetta, but the warm goat cheese salad was delightful, and the eggplant was good--it tasted like the eggplant had been through a very light egg wash, which was nice. The sauce for the pomodoro was good, but nothing special.

One very serious problem: the wait staff needs to learn a bit about wine. I asked for a wine list and was told that they have one list that was "floating around the restaurant." After going to retrieve it and returning empty-handed, the waitress asked what kind of wine we'd like. When we asked what they had for syrah, she replied, "Oh, we have one of those. Is that what you want?" Ugh. We tried it--a Sicilian wine--and it was decent, but not great...especially not worth nineteen bucks. But we had a good meal in spite of the ignorance about wine (and in spite of the long time it took for us to get our check).

What, you're probably wondering, could top this evening so far? Well, the most romantic destination in Clermont, of course: the drive through car wash. Melissa's car needed it, and I went all out, buying the deluxe wash that includes tire shine and everything.

After dinner and the car wash, we went by the Target to get a latte at the in-store Starbucks (not as good as what I could make at home, but the best you can get in Clermont, I'm afraid) and took it down to the lake to watch the sunset.

Very, very nice.