Parizade - Duke Staff Appreciation Night

This has been Staff Appreciation week (season?) at Duke and one of the things they did one evening last week was offer a "buy one meal, get one half off" special at several local restaurants. Several of us went to Parizade to take advantage of this. One of my friends ordered the pork loin with fennel seed crust, apple cider mustard sauce and mashed potatoes. He also ordered the tuna tartare, but I didn't get my camera out quickly enough. It looked similar to the tuna I ordered at Six Plates a few days before, which you will see if I get around to writing about how good that was.
Friend of Google Earth Evangelist (FOGEE) , ordered the tuna with garbonzo bean cous cous, zucchini, spinach and balsamic fig tapanade. I got the impression that the figs added an unusual flavor to this dish.

Google Earth Evangelist (GEE), ordered salmon with spinach and a citrus grapefruit vanilla glaze. GEE thought the sauce was a little overpowering, but I thought it was great, because I like very strong citrus flavors. The spinach was velvety smooth and wonderful. I appreciated GEE"s giving me the opportuntiy to try this and wasn't sure how much I wanted to give it back.

Over the years, my most common order at Parizade has been the salmon and pasta. For years it had a black pepper champagne cream sauce, which was wonderful. One of the constants in this dish has been the fresh, but warm, tomatoes, which I now think are an essential ingredient, if you can eat them. Surprisingly, I enjoyed this dish even more as leftovers and that's unusual.

For dessert, I had the creme brulee, which was good. The caramelized crust was slightly warm from the torch and the custard was cool. Tonali still wins the Glob award for best creme brulee in this area, as far as I'm concerned, but I was happy with this and liked the fact that it was a reasonable size. So many restaurants are making their desserts larger and larger, which I think is a mistake. Sometimes you want your own personal dessert rather than having to negotiate.

FOGEE ordered the Belgian chocolate sampler, which was rather beautiful. I was pleased to get the strawberry.
GEE ordered the L'orange chocolate torte, which had three different types of chocolate on a chocolate cookie crust. The presentation was beautiful, with cocoa sifted onto a flower stencil.

On the other side was a delicious caramel sauce, which was excellent alone. Overall, the cake was a little rich for my taste, since once bite was similar to eating a soft truffle. I was very happy to have that one bite, though.