One singluar sensation

A typical Friday night 'round these parts as the end of the week brought on a bit of indecision as to whether Friday should be spent cocooning in the basement working through three more episodes of Deadwood or to wander into the rainy night to find a new restaurant. Comfort or risk.

Freakishly, we chose risk and headed up to Lebanon to try a new restaurant - which turned out to be closed. Then across the street, the Golden Lamb didn't sound right, so we headed down into Mason to try out a restaurant that we'd been saying we needed to check into for a while now: One. Turns out that we should've been going there for a darn long time now.

It might be the new Bacall's, our old favorite restaurant in College Hill where we could go at the drop of a hat and get an outstanding dinner.

We dropped in without any reservations - seemingly a safe thing to do as long as you don't want to eat after about 9pm on a Friday (limited experience prediction, admittedly) and headed into the lounge, forgoing the gorgeously decorated twin dining rooms - both redesigned from the old Mason official building's office spaces.

In the lounge we were greeted by wonderfully rich red chairs, tables, and a wall-spanning padded bench where I spent the remainder of the evening. The corner of the not-too-large lounge had been cleared for what would turn out to be a fairly enjoyable trio of twenty-something local jazz artists who played through our stay ('til about 9:30). From the bar menu, I had a great burger with creative condiments (onion and tomato jams), and the girl went with what she reported to be a great crab cake sandwich.

After a bit of listening to the band, we sampled the dessert menu - which apparently changes somewhat frequently as they offered none of the things listed on the website last night - apple-cranberry buckle with vanilla ice cream. The girl finished off her meal with a dessert wine, and we departed poorer by about twenty bucks each (with generous tip for the attentive and friendly bartender/waiter for the room.)

Clearly, we've been missing out by not eating at One regularly as they've been getting good press for a couple of years now, but we won't be missing out anymore as we'll be coming back again and again.

Anybody wanna join in?