This past weekend I went out to dinner on both Friday & Saturday night! Many of you know from reading that I am trying to save money these days, but it couldn’t be helped. Friday night, I went out for a friend’s birthday to Off the Common, the lobby restaurant in the Boston Park Plaza Hotel. The Park Plaza Hotel was built in 1925 and actually used to be beachfront property before the bay was filled in to make Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood. Crazy. There are so many restaurants in that area; we chose Off the Common because we had a room in the hotel and it was really easy for meeting up with people right in the lobby. We had wine and ordered mussels, lobster mac & cheese, buffalo chicken pops, the charcuterie plate, and a chicken & mushroom flatbread to share. From there we went out to Whisky Saigon and had a great time dancing with friends. There was an interesting crowd there, college age all the way up. The music was great and it was really easy to get a bartender, which is a huge plus in Boston. Only thing I didn’t like was the only water they gave you was bottled for $5….oh well.

Here are a couple pics I took off the Park Plaza Hotel website….its a gorgeous older hotel, definitely in a great location too!

Saturday night my fiancé, Jon, and I went to The Bancroft in Burlington, MA. We had a gift card and had a birthday party to go to at Kings afterwards. The Bancroft is the latest restaurant from the Webber Restaurant Group, who also own the Gibbet Hill Grill at Gibbet Hill Farm in Groton and the Scarlet Oak Tavern in Hingham. The Webber family bought the Gibbet Hill Farm back in 2000 and their mission is provide a quality dining experience using sustainable & local food sources. Most of the produce for the restaurants comes from Gibbet Hill Farm and I believe most of the meat comes from Blood Farm in Groton.

The food was so good. I ordered the Reissdorf Koelsch, a delicious German beer, and the seared Ahi tuna with carrot puree. My fiancé got the Kurobuta pig chop with truffle polenta fries. We also got the yukon gold mashed potatoes to share, and their chocolate cake  for dessert. The cake came with their homemade vanilla gelato and was filled with a chocolate espresso sauce. If my wallet/body could handle eating like that every night, I would haha. The bread came in the most adorable little cast iron tray, and the beer came in the correct glass for a koelsch…everything was really just perfect. I don’t usually take pictures of my food, but maybe I should start huh?

A couple of the drinks on the cocktail menu cracked me up. One was “What would Bill Murray Do?” and another was “It’s a baby whale, bro”. Now, the second one is only funny if you have seen the youtube video of two guys with wicked Boston accents talking about a sun bathing sunfish. Totally normal behavior for a sunfish after its been on a deep swim.  I will link it here, but he drops a lot of F-bombs, so beware the setting that you watch it….it is really funny though.

Saturday morning, we went and checked out the Fruitlands in Harvard MA, it was so fun. It was a perfect activity to do with the pup on a nice fall day, I will post it tomorrow! First thing off my list of 50 places to see in MA!

Now as I said, I don’t usually go out to eat this much because eating out is expensive, but Friday was a birthday dinner for a friend, and we all split starters to keep out tab down because we are all saving money for one thing or another. Saturday night was lovely because we had a gift card from my fiancé’s boss for our engagement.

What did you do this weekend? Any good restaurants or outings? I hope so!