New Year's Eve

December 31st - New Years Eve. A date we often take time to reflect back and look forward to all the great new things to come in the new year. If you were to ask me what I envisioned my 2018 would be like a year ago, I would not have predicted all the amazing things that happened in my life. As a medical student, it’s sometimes hard to find free time outside of school. A lot of my time was spent in clinical rotations at the hospital and doing multiple emergency medicine rotations all over the country, which reaffirmed that emergency is definitely the field that I want to be in. But more importantly, the time I spent outside of the hospital was largely spent with Helen. When I think of New Years Eve, I think about how my life changed entirely from this date exactly one year ago. The date when my relationship with her really began.

It was December 31st, 2017 when we started to see and talk to each other on a regular basis. Looking back at the last year, I’ve realized that my life has never been so full. The experiences, the emotions, and the conversations I’ve had with Helen have made me really reconsider my outlook on life. I used to think that my career was something that was the most important thing in my life. Having gone through a five year undergraduate in engineering, working in industry, going back for a 2 year post-bac, 4 years of medical school followed by years of residency training to come, how could it not, right? Wrong. The more our relationship grew, the more I realized that there’s more to life than a career. There’s such a vast spectrum of the human experience to explore - raw emotions, worldly experiences, and I couldn’t be happier than to be able to experience it with Helen.

To celebrate this day one year ago, I decided to take Helen to The Kitchen - a small and cozy restaurant in Pittsford, NY run by Chef Joseph Picolla. He runs a constantly changing prix fix menu and we found it to be a very interesting dining experience! The restaurant itself seats no more than 20 people, so it was a fairly intimate setting. At first glance, the menu itself doesn’t seem like anything special - butternut squash ravioli, pizza, fish taco, turkey dinner, and cherry pie. However, each dish was deconstructed and elevated in a surprisingly unique and tasteful manner. The food itself was all plated in front of us, which was really interesting to watch as they spent so much effort into making each dish look great!

Helen looking beautiful as usual, wine in hand

personalized tasting menu was a nice touch!

Chef Joseph Picolla: Meticulously plating each dish

Butternut Squash Ravioli: Pea tendrils, butternut squash, sous-vide egg yolk, powdered olive oil, and walnuts in a mysterious sweet and creamy sauce that neither of us can recall what it consisted of.

PIZZA: A very liberal term of what we would call a pizza, but was extremely delicious nonetheless. Vine ripened heirloom tomato cored out and stuffed with sweet Italian sausage and mozzarella on a bed of crushed homemade bread and topped with a tomato foam, olive oil, and balsamic

Fish Taco: Sous-vide halibut, corn chips topped with blanched watercress and 4 different sauces.

Turkey Dinner: Sous-vide turkey breast wrapped in a sage and sausage stuffing served on top of a potato puree and topped with an orange and star-anise spiced cranberry sauce.

Cherry Pie: Interestingly, dessert was the most filling dish of the course. An eggnog creme brulee served with a hashtag pie crust, whip cream, and a sweet cherry sauce.