Dinner c/o Panzur

As I already noted, trepidation ran deep in my heart as the weeks and days between me and the reunion dwindled. I kept thinking about not going, but knowing I wasn't really going to do that ... or was I? And one of the main things I knew I should think about and discuss with a few key lady friends was dinner. The area around Bard is many things but one has a very limited number of restaurant options within a reasonable distance of campus, and since our reunion weekend was at the same time as Bard's graduation, there was a good chance that many of the best restaurants' would be booked with parents and kids as well as alumni. Thankfully my ambivalence didn't rub off on C., who took the bull by the horns and made a reservation at Panzur. I had generally enjoyed my experience there last year when I met up with my former professor, L.D. and it was a good spot near campus so I was pleased with C.'s 'getterdone' spirit. C., K. and I met up at our 'dorm' and after a little more socialization with a number of folks, we all headed out for the dinner. And a good thing we had a reservation, we saw at least one group get turned away because all seats were already vouched for. The lighting wasn't the best, so I didn't manage to take photographs of any worth for each and every bite we had, but some turned out good enough. We had a dry cured Spanish chorizo sliced fresh just for us, marinated olives and pippara peppers, burrata in a salsa verde, a shrimp dish, a sausage dish, and  a frisee salad.I would love to give you a little more detail about some of those dishes, but the restaurant's menu doesn't list them and I do not have a photographic memory.

The burrata with salsa verde was delightfully rich and creamy and the salsa was delicate and nuanced in its interaction with the rich milky nature of the burrata's innards.

This was a nice light dish to balance out the heavier sausage dish that isn't featured due to my own photographic limitations.

We also shared a bottle of tempranillo wine (or at least I think that's what it was). This is a terribly uninformative post and for that I must apologize. I was too busy enjoying the company of C., K. and L. (who arrived at the restaurant just a bit after we ordered). Afterwards we made our way to the Black Swan for one beer. The Black Swan was the location of many a debaucherous college night and things had both changed and not...the recurring feeling of the night for me was simply that things/places may very well stay much the same, but if they're not populated with the same regular cast of characters, they can still make you feel like a stranger.