Saved by the Pops!

A couple of friends and I went out last Thursday night for an impromptu dinner...in all honesty, we had been planning to attend the Picco Earth day fundraiser I had been raving about. Unfortunately, once we arrived ready to gorge at Picoo Restaurant, the event turned out to be slightly different from what we had been informed about...Seeing as we weren't in the mindset to wait around for 40 minutes for a table and wouldn't have been able to squeeze four spots out of the bar, we decided to give that plan up and try something else.

Our default plan was Pops, one of the many other restaurants located on tremont Street in the South End. That's one of the nicest things about the area, it has so many different restaurants to choose from that usually you can salvage your night.

This is what happened for us. We went into Pops, were greeted by an old friend of mine whom I used to work with (in the good old hostessing days), and were seated right away. Pops has recently reworked its interior set up as well as its menu and both are to the restaurant's advantage.

We ordered a round of drinks, my friends each got a different glass of red and I got the Pops champagne cocktail; a mixture of bubbly, bitters, crème de violette, with a sugar cube in the bottom and topped with cava. They were all great choices and set the mood for the rest of the meal.

We each tried something different, one friend got the famous Spicy Lamb Bolognese, loaded with delicious chunks of ground lamb meat, another tried the Mix sausage trio which comes with three different types of sausage over a poutine like sweet potato medley. Both main courses were deliciously playful to the mouth and appeasing to the eye.

My other friend and I tried some of the small plates, this is the newest edition to the menu and, as you know, the more frugal option. My friend got the skewered salmon, I got the vanilla sweet potato filled ravioli and we shared the sushi chicken and ginger rice balls. Suffice it to say that all of our dishes met even my standards and despite the range in foods, they somehow managed to complete each other beautifully. I soaked up every last bit on my place (and the plates of others :)) with my bread, which happens to be the best bread served in all the South End.

We finished the night off with chocolate filled doughnuts garnished with poudered sugar and accompagnied with crème anglaise and a raspberry popsicle.

So what can be learned from this delicious default? When in doubt or in a tight spot, allow yourself to be saved by the Pops!