You can dress her up but...

For the last week I've been in Sacramento for AVID training. AVID is a great program that I truly love and support, but I hate that the training is in Sacramento in July. It was between 100 and 103 all week, but this was an improvement over last year when it averaged 105 with hideous air quality because of forest fires in the area.

One of the great things about actually being able to breathe and function this year was that it made spending my daily food stipend much easier. On our last night, Thursday, we decided to splurge and go to a fancy-looking restaurant down the street from our hotel called Ella.

Here's a mock-up of the outfit that I wore to our fancy dinner. I'll have to say that I actually looked quite nice (you might have to expand the picture to see the labels):


We arrive, the hostess seats us, pulls out our chairs, puts my friend's napkin in her lap, then turns to me. "Our napkins are lint free," she says. And I'm like "yey for you." And then she says, "but I can get you a black one instead." Oh right--because I'm wearing a black dress. Got it. I assured her that the white napkin would be just fine.

The decor alone of the restaurant is pretty awesome (the pictures on their website show it well too). It's like high-class Ikea. Lots of white drapes and modern white Scandinavian/Dutch-inspired stuff. I particularly enjoyed this table-on-table-on-table arrangement where they keep all the glasses, cutlery, etc.


One of our other site team members had been here last night and told us to make sure to check out the ceiling and to ask about the story behind it. A majority of the walls and ceiling were covered with shutters like these:



It turns out that while they were in Amsterdam getting concepts for the restaurant, they heard that hundreds of these shutters were being removed from buildings in Budapest to modernize the city. They went over there and shipped 500 pairs home to use in the decorating of the restaurant (if you look a the table picture more closely/enlarged, you'll be able to catch a glimpse of the shutters on the ceiling).

Of course everyone knows that fancy restaurants have the best bathrooms. I excused myself to go to the restroom, but couldn't find it. I asked the hostess to point me in the right direction but instead she walked me across the restaurant to the general vicinity. And of course I took a picture.


And of course, the main attraction: Food. There's a tenderloin with stuffed new potatoes, a "true" gin & tonic (not mine), parmesan potatoes au gratin (I've never seen potatoes shaved so finely), green beans with peppered bacon, and "Pappardelle (hand cut pasta ribbons) with wagyu beef bolognese and parmesan bechamel," which translates to "really good spaghetti."



Obviously even dressed up it's obvious that we don't belong--but when a group from our site team, dressed in their sneakers and brightly colored AVID polos, spotted us through the floor-to-ceiling plate glass window and started knocking, waving, and gesturing to us wildly, I'm pretty sure that it was obvious.

Overall it was a worthwhile splurge that was a nice way to finish off a week of intense classes and intense heat. If I have to go back to Sacramento next year, you'll find me at Ella's.