Bottega Louie to celebrate our birthdays

As you all know, last week, I celebrated another year of my existence. I baked Fluffernutter Cupcakes and Biscoff Cupcakes to commemorate the day. Traditionally in our family, if our birthdays land on a weekday, we celebrate by going out to a fancy dinner the following weekend. And because hubby's and my birthday is about 2 weeks apart, we usually go out on the weekend between our birthdays. This past weekend happened to be that weekend.

My mom asked me where I wanted to go out to dinner. Normally we go to our usual restaurants: Lawry's Prime Rib, Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, Fleming's, or Roy's. This year, however, I wanted to try something different. All thanks to one of my good friends who had instilled in me a new restaurant that I had been dying to visit. Bottega Louie.

A fairly new restaurant, Bottega Louie is a hip restaurant and gourmet market. Most of its clientele are yuppies. Rarely will you see a young family or that of the older generation. Its a very loud and busy establishment.

(Macaron display on the window)

As soon as you enter the restaurant, you will be overwhelmed with the abundance of dessert displays. From cupcakes to cookies to different pastries......

.....and finally what they're famous for. Macarons.

As we were seated at our table, we were served with their baked bread and a side of butter that they place directly on our table, lined with butcher paper.

For starters, we ordered their popular Portobello fries, which were strips of Portobello mushrooms dipped in batter and deep fried. Served with an aioli sauce, this appetizer had quite a unique taste that was quite yummy. We also ordered their Diver Scallops, as recommended by our waiter. The scallops were sweet and moist and so tender. A great recommendation. And of course, if a menu has fried calamari in it, you better believe we'll order it. And so we did. 

For our main courses, we all ordered different dishes. Mom ordered the Ceppo Gamber, shrimp with ceppo pasta and sauteed with garlic and olive oil.

Hubby ordered the Striped Sea Bass served on top of risotto.

I ordered the popular dish on the menu, the Trenne, which is trenne pasta, fried to a crisp, with braised prime rib eye and kale. I know why this dish was popular because it was delicious.

I didn't get a chance to photograph my sister and brother's meal. But my sister had the Lasagna Bolognese and my brother had the Hanger Steak Verdura, which they both enjoyed. My brother even had a few bites of my sister's lasagna, because it was apparently super delicious. 

As an added bonus, we were seated right in front of the pizza making station where we (mostly my daughter) were thoroughly entertained by the pizza tosser.

For dessert, my brother decided to order the chocolate souffle with Tahitian Vanilla Bean sauce and a side of vanilla bean gelato. 

I decided to order something outside of my normal creme brulee and settled on the Le Grande Macaron, which was a vanilla macaron stuffed with vanilla ice cream and fresh berries. Yummy!

After we had eaten our meal, one of the managers came by and asked how our dinner went. Mom mentioned that it was hubby and my birthdays, and so they served us each a scoop of gelato that I couldn't eat much of because I was stuffed.

Of course, we couldn't leave Bottega Louie without purchasing any of the Macarons they're known for. So I bought a small box, along with some sprinkled pretzels that my daughter, of course, wanted to have.

All in all, I was very pleased with my experience at Bottega Louie. My parents and hubby loved the food, but weren't too keen about how noisy the place was. Its a marketplace, so its what's expected. I'm not sure if hubby would want to return here again. But I'm hoping he'll allow us to return, because I heard they also had an awesome brunch menu :)