I’m very excited these days. You see, this weekend I’m heading down to the Mohegun Sun casino in Connecticut to celebrate my birthday. You’ll probably think I’m a little crazy when I tell you that I most likely won’t do any gambling. Instead, when I head down to the casino, I just focus on the eating and drinking. Mohegun Sun has a bunch of great restaurants from a variety of celebrity chefs including Jasper White and Todd English. The newest restaurant to open there features one of the most famous chefs in the country: Bobby Flay. Flay has opened Bar Americain in Mohegun Sun (in addition to a burger restaurant). I’ll be dining there this weekend, and needless to say, I have been perusing the menu often.

I still don’t know what I want to try, and I probably won’t until I get there, but I have been lusting after some of the offerings available. Like so many menus, the appetizers almost sound better than the meals. Barbeque duck tacos? Yes please. A classic tuna tartar? Always delicious, and I would be curious to see Bobby’s take on it. Grilled pizza with bacon, caramelized onions and garlic? I find it hard to say no to pizza. I would be sure to get the crispy oysters, but I’ll be stopping by Jasper White’s Summer Shack before dinner to down a few oysters on the half shell.

The entree selections are actually more limited than the appetizers, but there is still plenty to whet the appetite. Duck is one of my favorites, and Bar Americain offers theirs with dirty wild rice, pecans, and bourbon. That sounds delicious, and just may be the most likely to be my birthday dinner. Not every menu has venison on it, so I’ve also been thinking a lot about the venison loin, served with red cabbage bread pudding. I’m a huge fan of bread pudding, both sweet and savory. One of the more intriguing entries on the menu is a rack of pork. That’s not something you see everyday, and it is served with apple butter and Brussels sprouts.

Let’s face facts. This is Bar Americain. I’m sure that I could close my eyes and point to something and not be disappointed. Have you been checking out any particularly tasty looking menus lately?

When my sister-in-law recently told me about a relatively new Worcester restaurant that offers all local fare, I was intrigued, to say the least. Heck, I base my whole column, Fresh Foodie, on championing local, whole foods. So I hopped over to Armsby Abbey‘s website to check out the goods.

Yeah, it’s about the beer, but that’s never a bad thing. The cheese plates, homemade pizzas and unique salads are mouth-watering, and I’ll share what I’ll be ordering the next time we ditch the kid and get a date night:

I’ll be starting with the West Coast Slate with the recommended Green Flash West Coast IPA. This cheese slate includes artisan goat cheese, blue cheese and Carmody, a hard, buttery cheese; champagne grapes, home-baked breads, roasted pistachios, salami, honey and raspberry preserves round out the selection.

What? Not drooling yet?

Following that cheese plate up will be the fried green tomato salad, marinated in soy lime marinade with a sweet corn and red pepper salsa and chevre crostini.

Armsby Abbey also has artisan stoned pizzas, but seeing as I don’t eat wheat and I just enjoyed some home-baked breads with my cheese plate, I’ll forgo the pizza. OK, I’ll have a bite of Keith’s. Just a bite.

Join Debbie as she raves about whole foods, rants about chemicals and generally celebrates cooking and eating with fresh, local, nutritious foods. And sometimes she might get a little feisty….

I appreciate it when a restaurant celebrates, rather than undervalues, the vegetable selections of the meal. A huge hunk of meat with a spring of parsley doesn’t impress me, but I can tell you that I would be so desperate for something green on my plate — and in my belly — that I’d down that parsley like it was the last morsel of food on earth. I know, I can always order a side salad (and I do) but a good chef will accent his dishes with delectably prepared veggies that go with the entree selection.

For our wedding anniversary, Keith and I went to Ming Tsai’s restaurant, Blue Ginger. It had been several years since we’d been back there (since we moved) and a visit to one of our favorite haunts was long overdue. Now, I won’t go saying that Ming’s menu selections are all about the veggies; I was left wanting more, as always. However, he does incorporate vegetables into his dishes like all good chefs should. Let me tell you about them….

For my appetizer, I ordered the fois gras shiitake shumai in sauternes-shallot broth. This is quite possibly one of the most delicious things I have ever put into my mouth, and for just a brief moment, I considered not sharing with Keith (who saved half of his appetizer for me). As it was, I tried to trick him into believing that I had to eat two of the three because it was too hard to split one, but alas, he didn’t fall for it.

The broth was chock-full of shallots, a vegetable, and there were shiitake mushrooms in the shumai filling, but the use of vegetables I loved the most in this dish were the edamame sprinkled throughout the broth, and topping each shumai. The bright green was perfect, and I wish Keith’s cell phone took better pictures so I could share it with you.

Keith’s appetizer was tea-smoked salmon and beef carpaccio with fresh wasabi emulsion — yeah, I know. But the best part was the jicama and avocado — for lack of a better word — guacamole that was served with it. It made the raw meat refreshing; and that, my friends, is the way to serve veggies.

For dinner, I had the rice paper-wrapped salmon with lobster-sake sauce with wild mushroom risotto and shaved fennel-herb salad. The salad was heavy on the fresh cilantro and mint, which made the dish. Sure, I would have served the whole shabang on a bed of microgreens, but the cool and light fennel and herbs balanced the richness of the rest of the entree.

Keith’s dinner was the tea spiced pork loin with black bean-garlic pork belly with spring pea-wild mushroom fricassee and two basil puree. Basically, there was a huge puddle of veggies under his meat, but it was alll so… cooked. I’m voting for that bed of microgreens again to lighten things up.

I don’t know, maybe I’m too veggie-oriented if I can find fault wth Ming Tsai, arguably one of the most creative and whole-foods centric chefs out there right now. I commend Ming’s artistry and the fact that he values veggies enough to make them part of the whole (no a la carte here) but still I crave more. Do I need an intervention?

The first thing you’ll notice when you read the restaurant’s dinner menu is that it’s primarily made up of seafood dishes, some of which I’d never seen before. Not that that’s a bad thing, of course, but if you’re not in the seafood mood, your choices seem limited, at least for the first two courses.

The main dinner menu, as listed on the website, mentions a choice of three dish choices for $98 (yowch!) There are three courses, with some items that require an additional supplementary fee of $10 to $25. For example, there’s egg caviar for a first course ($25 supplement) and pan seared sweetbreads, glazed chestnuts and black truffle vinaigrette ($20 supplement).

For non-seafood items, there’s a few third course items listed. Including the already-mentioned sweetbreads, there’s loin of lamb, dusted with black trumpet mushrooms and baby leeks, and roasted beef tenderloin, crispy potato blintz and apple-jalepeno puree ($10 supplement for that one), and a few others.

My ideal three-course selection would be:

1) Fois gras brulee, dried sour cherries, candied pistachios and white port gelee

2) Black cod steamed with Honshimeji mushrooms and lemongrass consomme

3) Crunchy rabbit, citrus-chili paste and soybean puree

There’s also the dinner tasting menu for $148 (double yowch!), which looks worthy of consideration. If you’re stepping foot into Jean Georges, you’re already aware that you’ll be spending at least a few Franklins. Why not go all the way and go with the tasting menu and get smaller samplings of six dishes and a dessert?

You can get a look at the Jean Georges menus on their website.

Pepper’s is no typical take-out, though. Usually they only do catering services for parties, making an exception on Valentine’s Day for people to order ahead and pick up that night. Their menu selections are amazing, as you can see from this year’s menu (huge image, but it’s better than a PDF).

So, from this menu I’m having (vegetarians and vegans turn away now):

• Heart-Shaped Ravioli (don’t laugh) – 3 cheese, pink peppercorn ravioli with roasted tomato cream sauce, long-stemmed marinated artichoke heart, and micro green garnish.
• Locally Raised Char grilled Lamb T-Bone Chops – With black cherry black pepper balsamic demi-glace (100% Hormone free, antibiotic free locally raised).
• Lemon-Rosemary Roasted Red bliss Potato.
• Vegetable Herb Cous Cous.
• Cheesecake Wedge – Creamy cheesecake with cranberry and cranberry coulis.

Deb’s having:

• Mediterranean Salad – Arugula, watercress, crispy pancetta, fresh mint, scallions, pomegranate seeds, shaved parmesan cheese, and pomegranate vinaigrette.
• Pan Seared Breast of Duck – With braised Swiss chard, pomegranate seeds and pomegranate gastrique.
• Roasted Parsnips/Carrots.
• Sautéed Haricot Vertes with roasted red pepper and garlic butter.
• Fire Crackers – Red and white striped chocolate tubes filled with chocolate cake, white chocolate mousse and traditional German chocolate (coconut and pecan) fillings served with caramel sauce.

We’ll most definitely have wine with this, which will likely be one of our favorite bottles of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. So good.

So, come on now, don’t be shy: what are you having?

It seems to me that everyone would get how good food is the pinnacle of happiness. I mean, yeah, I love chocolate, and I love a good burger. But I’m talking food, the kind of food you can’t possibly imagine eating without the perfect wine to accompany it. I’m talking pornographic food.

I actually feel sad for people who don’t think food is one of life’s greatest pleasures. Eating to simply exist means you are missing out on the gastronomic joys that life has to offer. Salivation is not simply to help you digest your food; it’s foreplay.

And with that, I bring you my dream meal from Chicago’s Bistro 110.

First, I’ll start with a salad:

Salade de Betterave, Roquette, raisins blonds et Roquefort
Beet and baby arugula salad with a red wine vinaigrette and Roquefort cheese

This is pretty much one of the perfect salad combinations I can think of: the sweet, earthiness of beets, the addictive bitterness of arugula and the creamy mold that is blue cheese. Delightful. For dinner, I’m going with:

Cassoulet
Duck leg confit, braised lamb shoulder, ragout of white beans,
cooked with thyme, rosemary and tomatoes

There were a lot of pornographic choices, but for me choosing the cassoulet was easy. Adding duck confit and braised lamb shoulder to the ultimate comfort food dish — for French Canadians like me! — and you couldn’t ask for a more perfect entree.

I’m guessing I’ll have to have some port and Green and Black’s dark chocolate back at the hotel room, as there are no dessert choices on the menu.