Staying Local on Saturday

I believe there was a good chance that I wouldn't have made it out of the house on Saturday if Jen hadn't been a good friend and suggested dinner at a Newton favorite, The Local. Andrew and I had been motivated on Friday night to do some cleaning and throwing away of junk for one of our many cluttered rooms, but Saturday, I hadn't accomplished much more than watching the Winter Olympics and reading a book. In partial defense, I was suffering a particularly bad headache that wouldn't go away and made me feel too run-down to do more cleaning.

All it took it took was some fresh air, good companionship and tasty food to get my spirits up!

I won't go into too much detail about the food, since I ordered the same (dee-licious) homemade potato chips and Jen and I both opted for a cheeseburger, but we were happy to find new desserts on the rotation.

Jen went with the pound cake with crystallized berries and sour cream and proclaimed it delicious. She offered me a taste but I was honestly too full to even attempt a bite, despite my love of blueberries:

As for me, I ordered a pudding parfait with fresh berries that sounded nice and light but when it arrived, I realized what I had essentially orderd was breakfast. It was fresh berries (raspberries, blackberries, strawberries and I think blueberries) with vanilla and banana pudding and granola (it wasn't called this, I think it was described as nuts but it was definitely granola).  It was pretty good and I have to admit, the type of light and somewhat healthy dish I was looking for, but definitely not a "dessert" really, especially since the pudding had the consistency of yogurt.

The highlight of the night? Realizing that The Local carries my favorite Dr. Loosen Reisling,.

Go Local

Upon Jen's suggestion - based on her favorite resource, Yelp - we headed over to a new restaurant in West Newton, The Local.

It's an upscale neighborhood joint that specializes in local food, beers and wines.

The highlights of the meal were the still warm potato chips with french onion dip that we enjoyed as an appetizer:


For the main course, I had a cheeseburger, Andrew got the fish and chips and Jen got macaroni and cheese with ham and peas. I am happy to report that The Local's fries are thin, crispy and served in generous proportions. Andrew and I ended up dipping our fries in the leftover french onion dip.

For dessert, Jen and Andrew opted for a cream cheese brownie topped with vanilla ice cream and caramelized milk sauce:



I had warm chocolate chip cookies with vanilla ice cream - the chocolate chips were the perfect melting consistency but I felt like the cookies were too stiff and lacked flavor. That would be the critical baker in me:


Overall, the meal was quite good and we'd definitely come back for a meal. The Local seemed to be popular already, while there was no wait when we first entered (around 7 pm), there was a 30 minute wait when we left around 8:30 pm.