Ginger by Night

Ruth | July 28th, 2009

I got wild & crazy this weekend and went with a friend to Ginger for drinks and appetizers on Saturday night.  Pretty crazy for me I know!

I have always enjoyed Ginger as a lunch stop, but haven’t been in at the dinner hour.  I read in an early review of Ginger shortly after they opened that they carry Sophia sparkling wine.  This if from the Niebaum-Coppola Winery (yes, the movie guy) and comes in a single serving can.  Seriously.  It comes in a can with a sippy straw no less!  Once I told my friend we couldn’t resist giving it a try.

Drinking champagne/sparkling wine out of a can really sets the tone for the evening.  We were giggly and silly all night long.  It also makes for a great story…night on the town and can of champagne.   We both agreed the sparkling wine was very good.  Not only do you have a good story, but you get a good drink besides.  Ginger did bring us champagne glasses and pour our small can into the glasses for us so we didn’t even use the sippy straws, but just having the can on the table was pretty enjoyable.  (We were headed to Cyrano’s after for a play and discussed sneaking cans in but neither of us had the appropriate brown paper bag to make that work.)

Once we got over the champagne in a can we had some appetizers to order.  If you haven’t been to Ginger you might not know about the pommes frites (fancy name for french fries) with wasabi sauce.  Lucky you.  Once you have these there is no stopping.  I haven’t been to Ginger without having the fries since my first taste.  These fries are well made to begin with, but then you get the wasabi sauce to dip them in and you will never look at ketchup the same way.  These are so good that we had to get an order and then still order the other things we wanted.   We agreed we didn’t “need” the fries, but neither of us was willing to pass them up either.

We also tried the calamari and the spring rolls.   The Spring rolls can be fried or fresh.  We went with fresh in a cilantro mint sauce.  The rolls are vegan and were very tasty.   The cilantro and mint complimented the flavors nicely.

The calamari was well made.  I hate a chewy over cooked piece of calamari which no sauce can save.  This was flavorful and done appropriately so it was easy to eat and the light batter complimented rather than covered the flavor of the calamari.  I’m not sure what the sauce was but it had a citrus flavor and was a nice pairing.

The great thing about any of these appetizers was that they could stand alone.  No sauce was needed, but the sauces added such a nice flair that we didn’t want to pass them up.

The can of champagne amused us enough to make it a fun night, but the superb food made it a night to remember.  I had so much fun I may have to get this wild more often!