Process Writing

While I had experience with creative writing coming into this course, I had never done any non-fiction or journalistic writing, which made my writing process slightly different than what I was used to.  My typical writing style is spend days coming up with the idea in my head, choose one, start writing and don't stop until the story is done.  I then go back and revise it.  For this class, the problem wasn't necessarily coming up with the perfect idea, it was taking an idea and writing it within the confines of the structure of the assignment.

 The first writing assignment for this course, the memoir, was closer to what I am used to than the other assignments.  Although it was non-fiction, telling a story in a creative way wasn't too far off, especially since most of my fiction writing is based somewhat off of my own reality.  Choosing what I would write about was pretty easy since the experience was still so engrained in my memory and something I told people about several times before.  I knew going into it that freedom was going to be the larger purpose of the piece since that was the larger purpose of my trip to Europe as a whole.  So as I do with most other writing assignments, I sat down and just kept writing until it was done.  Once I establish an idea, I have usually flushed out most of the details I need to know in order to write, which is why writing doesn't take me very long.  It is the brain-storming that is the hard part.  After finishing, I went back and rephrased some things, making it more entertaining and well-written.  After workshopping this piece, I had a lot of great ideas of what I wanted to change.  I think everyone nailed what the piece was missing.  It needed more of a picture of the life I was living before this taste of freedom to make it more meaningful.  When I went back to my piece, I knew what I wanted to change and I did.  I would say this writing assignment overall wasn't too difficult and very enjoyable.


The next assignment, the food review, was another story.  I was walking into new territory and it was terrifying to me.  Usually when I write, I can make the details up as I go.  This time, I needed to pay attention to every significant detail and convey them to my readers.  They were depending on me.  Before going to Rustica I did some research on the place, made some mental notes about what I needed to look for and reviewed the concept of mindful eating we had discussed in class.  I wanted to know what this food tasted like.  Not if it was good or bad, what experience it really made on my tongue.  After going to the meal with this mind-set, I got to work writing my review right away so it would be fresh in my mind.  This was much more difficult for me to do than my first assignment.  I looked back at several reviews we had read to get some ideas of how to construct my piece, but I think what ended up happening was I basically just rewrote my experience from start to finish.  From walking in to sitting down to eating to paying the bill, it was all linear and heavily focused on myself (being in the first person P.O.V.).  That may not necessarily be a bad thing, but I think for this particular piece it was.  These problems were teased out in our workshop and I tried to apply them in my revisions, but I still struggled.  Review writing is not about the author; it is a service for the reader.  I couldn't get out of my creative writing, story telling head and so there were still issues with P.O.V. and following the rules of this style of writing.  I think, like anything, it is just something I need more familiarity with, both in reading and writing reviews.  I'm glad I got the chance to explore this type of writing a lot in this class and I plan on discovering it further.  This was definitely the piece I struggled most with.

Finally, it was time to write my "Perfect Meal" story.  There was a reason this assignment was last: it combined almost everything we had learned in the class so far.  In comparison to Michael Pollan, I knew my perfect meal had more to do with the company and practice of cooking than the food itself (although I am a foodie so that was important, too), which is why I wanted to look back not only at The Omnivore's Dilemma but also Stealing Buddha's Dinner.  I knew my story would be more character driven than factual.  Before the meal I reflected on both of these works and compared and contrasted.  What elements of both were important to my piece?  After thinking abstractly about this assignment, I started thinking concretely about my meal.  It didn't take long for me to decide what I as going to do since I had the opportunity to come home and when I think of food I think of my dad.  Filet Mignon was a no brainer, as my story depicts, since steak is my dad and I's "thing."  I figured out the other details and intentionally did not plan anything more.  I wanted the experience to be organic.  The point of the piece was spending quality time with my dad and that can't be forced.  The experience did not disappoint.

When I set out to write the rough draft of this paper I kept in mind what we had discussed in this course already.  Like my dad always says, be bright, be brief, be gone.  I wanted it to be short and sweet; staying within the word count while keeping the qualities of the work that were necessary.  I did my typical write until it is done style of writing with this in mind and then went back and revised/cut down.  Even after cutting it down it was still 200 words over the limit.  After workshopping the piece, my peers made me realize that all of the elements I had hoped for were there, but they needed to come out more.  The importance of my dad was obvious, but I needed to make his character shine through.  It wasn't going to fit within the word limit.  But I still wanted to keep it short enough that I wasn't rambling, because that is something I often do.  I walked out of workshop totally inspired by everyone's great feedback, ideas bouncing all around my mind.  I got straight to work and made my dad the character he truly is.  Being a typically fiction person, making my dad a "character" felt strange to me.  But it was what the story was missing.  Doing this revision was actually the most fun I had with writing in this course, and it is the revision I am most happy with.  I love when I get to a point in my writing that the idea I couldn't quite put into words just comes out and you can feel it.  It was even cooler doing this based on the true experience I had with my dad.  It made it that much more important.

While this course was challenging in that it made me rethink the way I write, I gained so much.  It was awesome to see that I could make something as mundane as eating salmon entertaining and meaningful.  No one had to die in my story to make it entertaining.  I could depend on my own writing abilities to bring life to it.  I could write to serve others: providing useful information to my readers.  I could turn an everyday experience into something that means something not only to myself but to others.  This course has made me want to dabble with creative non-fiction some more.  It was a challenge, but it was very rewarding.

A Wow-Worthy Meal

            “Meg, would you go make your bed, please?” my dad yelled at my sister, the line of his poorly hidden smile punctuated by two big dimples.  Megan climbed up the stairs as my dad and I hovered in anticipation; he had let me in on his plan.  Suddenly, a loud shriek came bouncing off the happy pink walls of my sister’s bedroom as she realized what my dad had done.  Plopped right in the center of her bed was the early stages of tonight’s dinner: an uncooked slab of ribs.  My dad and I laughed so hard it was soundless as my sister feigned horror.

            I live in a household with one and a half vegetarian sisters (one of them caves when cheeseburgers are thrown into the mix) and it absolutely kills my dad.  He loves meat, to the point where we would have steak about two times every week, despite my vegetarian sisters.  The only way he can justify this is that I am just as much of a meat lover as he is.  I wish I could be a vegetarian, but the idea of giving up filet mignon is terrifying.  So it was something my dad and I had always bonded over.  Now that I am away at school, neither of us gets the opportunity to indulge in this mutual love of meat very often.  Which is why when I was presented with an unexpected opportunity to spend a night at home, creating the perfect meal with someone I love so much seemed like the ideal thing to do.

            The company for my perfect meal was set: just my big teddy bear of a dad and me.  Filet mignon was the obvious choice for the entrée.  But I didn’t want this to be just another weeknight steak dinner that happens so frequently in my house.  My dad always cooked our meals on his own and would anxiously await our inevitable praise.  This time, we were going to cook it together.  I also wanted to add my own spin on our standard favorite by making the side asparagus with a poached egg, an appetizer I had just recently discovered by dining at a fancy restaurant with some friends.  On the menu would also be a Caesar salad, baked potatoes and strawberry lemonade.

            After the menu and guest list came the preparation for the meal.  Organic versus industrial is a structure I only recently began to pay much attention to after reading Michael Pollan’s fantastic book The Omnivore’s Dilemma.  Because of the newly found internal struggle within me discovered by this book, in an ideal world everything on our plates would have been organic and local.  But finding all of this in a time crunch in the suburban area of metro-Detroit in which I live was a nearly impossible feat, so I decided I would do what I could.  At our neighborhood Kroger my dad and I picked up some organic strawberry lemonade that was on sale, Michigan asparagus, filets from the deli, romaine lettuce and Idaho potatoes.  Not ideal, but not awful.  It was a compromise I felt comfortable with.

             As much as I deeply love grills for what they produce, I hadn’t the faintest clue how to use one.  My dad takes great pride in his cooking concoctions and the cutting edge tools he uses to prepare them and so there was never any need for me to learn: he would do it himself.  He may look and seem like a big manly man with his tall and wide frame and fancy gadgets but to me, they were just silly toys.  My dad’s latest cooking contraption was something I was even less familiar with: the Big Green Egg.  It is a grill/oven/smoker ceramic cooker that creates a rich, smoky flavor in the meat.  My dad is obsessed with it, and was more than happy to show me step by step how to work it, from how to heat up the coals to how to maintain the perfect ventilation.  There were moments I just could not help but laugh at how seriously he took the Big Green Egg.  I mean, it is literally a big, green egg.  What’s not to laugh at?  He would have probably thrown me on the egg if he knew that was how I really felt.  But knowing that fact for some strange reason is one of the things I love about him.

            After heating up the Big Green Egg, the first step was to bake the potatoes.  After washing them and wrapping them in tin foil we popped them on the Egg and let them cook for much longer than I would have expected. As those were cooking, we prepared the meat.  My dad said we would be doing a reverse sear, (something I, and most people who aren’t steak/grill fanatics, had never heard of) which is a method in which you heat the steaks up at a lower temperature and then heat up the egg and sear both sides.  The filets were too thick to do a standard sear.  We oiled and seasoned the meat while singing along to The Beatles music playing in the background.  After getting the meat ready, we made my favorite steak sauce: zip sauce.  Our recipe was composed of clarified butter, oregano, kosher salt, cracked pepper, garlic and Maggie’s Seasoning.  We then prepared the asparagus to be grilled, coating them with olive oil, cracked pepper and sea salt and sealing them in tin foil.  We popped them on the egg and pulled them out fifteen minutes later without opening the foil case, letting them continue to cook.  I quickly tossed the salad and seasoned and poached the eggs in the microwave as my dad told me a story about his best friend/gadget rival whom he is always at war with to prove who has the coolest stuff.  As silly as it was, I loved hearing it.  I love that my dad is still a kid at heart.

            We had started making the meal at around 8:00 and we didn’t start eating it until 10:00.  But it hadn’t seemed that long.  As luck had it, it was a beautiful evening.  Our outdoor radio reported the Tigers Game as we sat on our back deck, waiting while the food cooked, my dad telling stories with a beer in hand.  “See, now when I make dinner you will know how much time it takes,” my dad said jokingly, but he was right.  He always cooked such extravagant meals for us thanklessly.  I had no idea how much time and effort he put into our steak dinners.  I was clueless that being able to eat steak so frequently was rare and something we should be very thankful for.  And that was because my dad never complained.  It made him happy to give his family the best, or at least what he thought was best; I’m sure my veg-head sisters would have a different opinion.  It made me appreciate my dad more, and it made it the perfect meal before we even sat down to eat it.

            The table was set and it was time to dig in.  It was the best steak I had ever eaten.  The zip sauce was the key.  Though I had had it before, this had a homemade taste to it: the kind of taste you can’t necessarily pinpoint but you know it is there.  The meat was so tender it tasted like the cows had just come from a day of massages at the spa.  The zip sauce lived up to its name, bringing out the flavors already present in the steak, just giving it that extra zip.  The mild Caesar salad and baked potato provided an excellent contrast to the rich meat.  And the strawberry lemonade was the perfect thing to wash it all down.  My family likes to rate meals by deeming them “wow-worthy” or not, and after our first bite my dad and I both awarded ourselves a big WOW.  By the time we were eating, our spirits were so high the conversation flowed and my heart was as full as my stomach.

            It was the moment I had been most anxious for: my dad taking his first bite of the poached egg asparagus.  I was not only nervous because it was the only out-of-the-ordinary thing that I had brought to the table (literally).  I was nervous because my dad had given me so much crap about making it!  “Emma, quit making that, we do not need eggs when we are about to eat steak!” he kept protesting.  But this was my perfect meal and I wanted to impress him.  The reason for his resistance was that my dad and I are people of tradition.  We don’t always love change.  And a nice and simple side of asparagus in prime asparagus season and country is tradition alongside a juicy steak in my house.  The egg threw things totally into whack, although all other parts of the meal were the same.  But I needed to add the egg.  It was an appetizer I had learned about while away at school; it represented the change between this now rare steak meal compared to weekly ones we used to have.  But I felt confident that this change was for the good.  And that could mean that other changes are good too, like me going away,  Because no matter how old we get and no matter where I end up in the world, I’m going to love my dad’s steak.  And he’s going to leave eating it with me.

            He took a bite and my fingers dug into my legs.  He chewed for a couple moments until he let out a reluctant “not bad.”  I smiled, that was good enough for me.  We rotated between eating our food and nearly dying of laughter.  I was literally in tears when a mosquito bit him and he said with no intentions of being comedic, “that bastard bit me in my own damn house!”  It never ceases to amaze me how my dad can go from acting like a teenage boy to a crotchety old man within a matter of minutes.  Its what I love about him, and it is what makes him a really great dad.  And this incredible meal was the ideal thing to bring those qualities out of him.  The food, the experience, my dad, it was all perfect.  No, wow-worthy.

The Perfect Meal Rough Draft

            Coming up with and preparing the perfect meal is an incredibly daunting task.  With the endless possibilities of food choices and innumerable ways I could go about preparing the meal, it seemed almost impossible to complete.  I had to truly reflect on what it is I love about cooking and eating before I could begin to prepare the meal.

            After serious reflection and contemplation, I realized my most memorable meals generally had to do more with the company and the events surrounding the occasion than the food.  I wanted to create the perfect recipe with all the right ingredients of company, timing and the cooking process to make my perfect meal.  I quickly realized the only person I could truly have this experience with was my dad.

            I live in a household with one and a half vegetarian sisters (one of them caves when cheeseburgers are thrown into the mix) and it absolutely kills my dad.  He loves meat, to the point where we would have steak about two times every week, despite my vegetarian sisters.  The only way he can justify this is that I am just as much of a meat lover as he is.  I wish I could be a vegetarian, but the idea of giving up filet mignon is terrifying.  So it was something my dad and I had always bonded over.  Now that I am away at school, neither of us gets the opportunity to indulge in this obsession very much anymore.

            The company was set: just my dad and me.  Filet mignon was the obvious choice for the entrée.  But I didn’t want this to be just another weeknight steak dinner that happens so frequently in my house.  My dad always cooked our meals on his own and would anxiously await our inevitable praise.  This time, we were going to cook it together.  I also wanted to add my own spin on our standard favorite by making the side asparagus with a poached egg, an appetizer I had just recently discovered.  On the menu would also be a Caesar salad, baked potatoes and strawberry lemonade.

            After the menu and guest list came the preparation for the meal.  Organic versus industrial is a structure I only recently began to pay much attention to.  In an ideal world everything on our plates would have been organic and local, but finding all of this in a time crunch in the suburban area in which I live was a nearly impossible feat, so I decided I would do what I could.  At our neighborhood Kroger my dad and I picked up organic strawberry lemonade, Michigan asparagus, filets from the deli, romaine lettuce and Idaho potatoes.  Not ideal, but not awful.  It was a compromise I felt comfortable with.

             As much as I deeply love grills for what they produce, I hadn’t the faintest clue how to use one.  My dad takes great pride in his cooking concoctions and the cutting edge tools he uses to prepare them and so there was never any need for me to learn: he would do it himself.  My dad’s latest cooking contraption was something I was even less familiar with: the Big Green Egg.  It is a grill/oven/smoker ceramic cooker that creates a rich, smoky flavor in the meat.  My dad is obsessed with it, and was more than happy to show me how it worked.

            After heating up the Big Green Egg, the first step was to bake the potatoes.  We popped them on the Egg and let them cook for much longer than I would have expected.  As those were cooking, we prepared the meat.  My dad said we would be doing a reverse sear, which is a method in which you heat the steaks up at a lower temperature and then heat up the Egg and sear both sides.  The filets were too thick to do a standard sear.  After getting the meat ready, we made my favorite steak sauce: zip sauce.  Our recipe was composed of clarified butter, oregano, kosher salt, cracked pepper garlic and Maggie's Seasoning.  We then prepared the asparagus to be grilled, coating them with olive oil, cracked pepper and sea salt and sealing them in tin foil.  We placed them on the egg and pulled them out fifteen minutes later without opening the foil case, letting them continue to cook.  I quickly tossed the salad, seasoned and poached the eggs in the microwave and our meal was prepared.

            We had started making the meal at around 8:00 and we didn’t start eating it until 10:00.  But it hadn’t seemed that long.  As luck had it, it was a beautiful evening.  Our outdoor radio reported the Tigers game as we sat on our back deck, waiting while the food cooked, talking about our lives.  “See, now when I make dinner you will know how much time it takes,” my dad said, and he was right.  He always cooked such extravagant meals for us thanklessly.  I had no idea how much time and effort he put into our steak dinners.  I was clueless that being able to eat steak so frequently was rare and something we should be very thankful for.  It made me appreciate my dad more, and preparing the meal created space for us to talk and catch up.  It was the perfect meal before we even sat down to eat it.

            The table was set and it was time to dig in.  This was the best steak I had ever eaten.  The meat was tender, the zip sauce brought out the flavors already present in the steak.  The mild Caesar salad, baked potatoes and asparagus provided an excellent contrast to the rich meat.  And the strawberry lemonade was the perfect thing to wash it all down.  My family likes to rate meals by deeming them “wow-worthy” or not, and after our first bite my dad and I both awarded ourselves a big WOW.  By the time we were eating, our spirits were so high the conversation flowed and my heart was as full as my stomach.

            I think of meals as opportunities to bond.  It is a time when people we care about join together to fulfill this basic human requirement: eating.  Being in college makes opportunities to do so with my family few and far between.  So maybe the steak wasn’t as good as I thought it was.  Thinking back, the lettuce in the Caesar salad was slightly wilted.  But it had been several months since I had seen my dad, and steak was something that always brought us together.  The meal wasn’t perfect, it was wow-worthy.

The Big Green Egg

 

Tada!

Part III of Assignment II: Rustica Review

            As I reflect on what I expected to find dining at Rustica, I see that in some ways my expectations were fairly correct, yet in others completely wrong.  I had anticipated a very intimate dining experience, and that is what I got.  Though it was not as dimly lit as I had imagined, the small space and atmosphere did create an intimate feel.  I anticipated perhaps feeling somewhat out of place being there with friends rather than on a date, but we were certainly not the only non-couples in the restaurant and I could imagine going there with my family of five.

            In terms of the food, I was prepared to be blown away and I was.  The food was excellent and rich, as I had expected it would be.  I was glad I ate minimally during the day because I was very full by the time we left, especially after the spectacular brownie.  The menu was smaller and more incomprehensible than I had expected it to be, hence me needing to pull out my phone to look up some of the words.  But in terms of quality and presentation, my expectations were met, if not exceeded.  The price of the food I was actually pretty shocked by.  I was thinking there was no way I would be walking out of there paying less than $50 for an entrée and tip.  I was able to get that and split a brownie spending no more than $40.  My main concern with dining at Rustica was that the food wouldn’t be worth the price, but I almost think I was getting a deal.  It would be a different story if I had been drinking alcohol and buying appetizers, but I was able to walk out feeling completely satisfied without my heart sinking from the money I spent.

            I chose Rustica because I thought it would be the most different dining experience I would find in Kalamazoo, although I didn’t expect it to be extremely different than what I had experienced in the past.  My family goes out to eat a lot and we enjoy all types of food.  Looking back, I realize Rustica was much more different than I had anticipated.  Despite my family’s frequent eating out, “farm to table” type of dining is not very common where I am from and therefor not a very common thing for my family to experience.  The higher end restaurants we typically venture to are either seafood places, steakhouses or strictly Italian.  Having such a wide variety on such a small, seasonal menu was not something I had much experience with, and this added to my enjoyment of the restaurant.  Eating at Rustica has made me more curious about local foods and seasonal dining.

            I think the most glaringly wrong expectation I had for eating at Rustica was that it would “provide a classic, European, and obviously rustic menu.”  The problem with this assumption was not that it was incorrect, but that I don’t even know what it means.  After reading “Culinary Tourism” and discussing our reviews in class, I have begun to realize how meaningless those words really are.  There are 50 countries in Europe (51 if you include the Vatican), so describing something as “European” is about as vague as you can get.  It goes back to the notion of “authenticity.”  It is a term that has been thrown around so frequently it has lost its meaning.  Describing something as classic European is ridiculous and completely indefinable.  Calling something European gives me absolutely no idea of the flavors or textures involved.  Although I see that this assumption is obviously ridiculous now that I look back at it, I am glad I made the mistake.  It signifies the importance of specificity with descriptions and the problems with assumptions.  Saying something is authentically European depicts an assumed understanding of what European is, even though that is an indefinable term, even for Europeans.

            The experience of reflecting before, during and after my dining experience made me practice mindful eating and think more critically about what it is I enjoy and dislike about dining experiences.  Thinking about what my experience would be like ahead of time made me very aware of everything I was experiencing as I experienced it.  Reflecting afterwards also made me think critically about the food and ambiance of the restaurant.  It made the experience more fulfilling and the memory more rich.  I think going through this writing assignment and comparing it with what we have been learning in class such as what we learned from “Culinary Tourism” has helped me improve my mindful eating skills and will make me continue these practices in the future, whether I am eating a duck from Rustica or a hot dog from Coney Island.

Rustica Review Final

            Rustica.  The restaurant’s name has as much flavor as its food does.  All it takes is one bite of the pillow of chocolate luxury that is the callebaut chocolate brownie to know that this is more than a restaurant: it is an artist’s studio.  Its delicate crumble-to-the-touch quality creates a texture only capable of the truly gifted.  In this one simple dessert, the artistry is there, just begging you to take a bite.

            Rustica is located downtown on Kalamazoo Mall, within walking distance of Kalamazoo College.  The entire layout of the restaurant can be seen simply by walking through the door.  It is narrow and small, perhaps a bit too small. There is no music to set the mood for the meal, which is for the best because it is already so loud it is hard to hear the server as she pleasantly greets the table, her formal attire matching her professional demeanor.  Although Rustica is snug, it is very pleasant.  Not many details cover the pale walls, giving the place an honest quality. The food and service speaks for itself without needing posters on the walls or catchy titles of entrees to distract from the product.  Tucked away in the back is a bar serving a wide variety of wines and beers, both local and European.  Rustica is known for its quality alcoholic beverages, being owned by the man who owns Tiffany’s liquor store.  In the middle of the dining area is the clearly visible kitchen so you can see your food as it is being prepared.

            At first Rustica’s fine dining may seem intimidating.   While the culmination of the candlelit tables and the short menu adds intimacy, it gives the impression that this is the sort of restaurant that is going to have more than one fork.  Getting a table is a battle on its own.  The venue and the hours of operation are both very small, doors not opening until 5 pm.  The menu may be short, but good luck understanding half of the words on it. I had to use my iPhone to look up almost every word, though the server was more than willing to answer any question I had.

            But after being seated and dictionary.com-ing every word on the menu, the dining experience is nothing short of fantastic.  What the menu lacks in length, it makes up for in variety of flavors and options.  The food is seasonal and local, and it shows. One of these seasonal items that is sure to leave the tongue begging for more is the duck breast.  The meaty marsala sauce prepares the taste buds for the delight to come: the meat.  It tastes like a perfectly cooked chicken and a tender steak mixed into one.  It is as soft as butter, practically dissolving with each bite.  The flavor of the duck stuffed puff pastry is at first overwhelming, but after eating it with a bed of refreshing spinach, the greens and meat combine into a combination that is earthy and invigorating.

Don’t let the extra room on the plate fool you.  The size and shape of the meal is not just for the aesthetic pleasure it supplies; it is small but it is hearty.  The mastery of the chefs can be observed while eating the meal, and it is clear they are capable of providing just enough to fill and satisfy.

After embracing the roller coaster of tastes provided by the duck, a side order of grilled asparagus provides just the break needed.  It is topped off with a poached egg that pops upon biting into it.  The egg as smooth as glass juxtaposes the crunch of the fresh-from-the-garden tasting asparagus.  For the brave souls venturing the seas of the baked seafood tagliatelle, consider yourself warned.  It is not for the faint of heart.  While the seafood itself tastes like a day at the beach, the sauce it is prepared in is reminiscent of a man’s shoe after running a marathon.  The cheese is potent and funky.  Not bad, but not for most taste buds.  That being said, finding anything on the menu that hasn’t been masterfully crafted would be a challenge, regardless of the season the menu is in.  Watching them fry and sauté as your mouth reaps the benefits of their gifts is like being able to purchase a painting as the artiest creates it.  The menu and techniques are as honest and open as the restaurant’s basic design.  They have nothing to hide, and so they don’t.

            If you make the wise decision of walking into Rustica, no matter what you do, do not even think about leaving if you have not tried the desert.  Undo the top button of your pants, don’t eat the entrée if you have to, just save room for dessert.  Particularly the callebaut chocolate brownie, topped with chocolate ganache and hazelnuts alongside a bed of chocolate gelato with caramel sauce.  It is the crack of dessert foods.  As you eat it, everything turns to slow-mo.  Your teeth hit the top layer and crack through the rich ganache, descending into the warm cloud of the brownie and finally cool down with the rich and smooth chocolate gelato.  It is warm and cool, crunchy and soft.  It is God’s gift to mankind.  Get it.

            After finishing dessert, the formal attire of the staff mixed with the obvious quality of the food may leave college students biting their nails as the check makes its way to the table.   Save your nail beds; it isn’t worth the stress.  The duck entrée, half of the brownie and tip allowed me to walk out of their only thirty bucks poorer.  The restaurant may not reach its goal as outlined on the website of being your every occasion meal, but when there is a special occasion that deserves to be celebrated, Rustica is a magnificent option.  The dining experience in all aspects lives up to the richness of the restaurant’s name.  It is affordable, it is classic, it is fantastic.