Happy Birthday Ms. R!!

One of my top 5 came into town for her college reunion.  Her birthday was yesterday, but since she was away, we didn't have a chance to celebrate.  I sent her a list of restaurants last week.  She had a hard time deciding but she finally narrowed it down to Sushi Samba and one other place.  Sushi Samba lost out so tonight, we went to Blue Water Grill in Union Square.

The menu was filled with delightful seafood selections.  We started off with an appetizer of two sushi rolls.

Spicy Lobster & Tuna Roll with avocado, jalapeno & cilantro aioli and the special Soft Shell Crab roll.  The lobster & tuna was amaaazing! The cilantro aioli was especially good and really went well with the lobster & tuna.  I loooove soft shell crab season.  You can put them in anything! The soft shell crab roll was great. I don't quite remember what the green sauce was, but it was fantastic!

After the sushi, we ordered the Townhouse.  A shellfish tower for two.  The tower included main lobster, alaskan red king crab, jumbo shrimp, littleneck clams, east coast and west coast oysters, scallop ceviche and marinated price edward island mussels.  I never thought I'd see the day where I was overwhelmed by seafood.  The tower arrived and all we could really do was stare.

We started at the bottom with the oysters.  I couldn't tell the difference between east coast and west coast oysters.  All I knew was that they were INCREDIBLE.  As Timone & Pumba taught Simba, "Slimy yet satisfying." I didn't realize how much I loved oysters until tonight.

Next up clams.  They were okay.  I thought that was the scallop ceviche, but they were sitting in clam shells so that didn't make sense.  We quickly moved on to the top of the tower.

Jumbo shrimp with spicy cocktail sauce.  Shrimp was fresh and sweet and the cocktail sauce was a great complement.

The mussels were great.  I don't know what the little sauce was on top of it, but it tasted great.  I usually eat mussels  hot sitting in broth, but these tasted pretty good cold.

That lobster was quite the challenge.  To start, we were ill equipped.  Rather than the great equipment I had on Sunday night, we were supplied with a less than stellar lobster cracker.  Ms. R went to work and was able to make sure we got the succulent lobster meat out of its shell.  The lobster was actually really tasty and we didn't really use any of the sauces.  We definitely saved the best for last.  We broke into the alaskan red king crab.  It was incredibly sweet which was quite shocking because I didn't expect it to taste so good!

After we finished, we were hoping our waitress would come over and we could order some dessert.  However, she let a whole lotta time pass and by the time she came back, we had to rush to get to the Blue Note.  She mentioned that she would have given us champagne and dessert.  When she returned with the check, she apologized, did not charge us for our refreshments and gave us some cookies in a bag.

Ms. R forgot the cookies in my bag, but I can say they were fantastic.  Big chocolate chunk cookies that left a big smile on my face!