It was our anniversary on the weekend, and we had a splendid day.

Rather than unnecessarily blow a wad of cash on fancy dinners and shows and things (as we sometimes do) we decided to have the nicest day around the neighborhood for under 100 dollars, and save up for a vacation later on instead. And as a result, I think we had one of the nicest days we’ve ever had.

For lunch we wandered around the Distillery.

We bought a coronation chicken sandwich and a tarragon chicken pot pie from the Brick Street Bakery. Both were astoundingly (astoundingly!) good. I am quickly becoming very fond of the rather retro combo of apricots, curry, cream and poultry that is Coronation Chicken. My royalty loving grandmother would no doubt approve, heartily. The pie was stuffed with juicy, spicy meat, and surrounded by pretty much the best crust I’ve ever had on a savoury pie. I am not a huge crust fan, but this crust made the pie. Perfectly flaky and crumbly and moist.

After some gallery browsing, we made our way to Soma where we had some gelato (a scoop each of: sour cream and lemon; raspberry, lemon and black pepper; and pistachio – all were dreamy) and some mayan hot chocolate. Soma has the best gelato and chocolate in town. It just does.

Then for dinner we went to a little restaurant down the street called Batifole. I had heard nothing but good things about it, namely that it is the best approximation of French bistro cooking in the whole city, and that it was astoundingly reasonably priced. Both were true. It was some of the best food I’ve ever had.

When we sat down we got bread accompanied by a little pat of butter sprinkled with grey salt – and it was some of the best bread I’ve ever had. I asked if they baked it themselves, and they said they had it made for them by the Brick Bakery. Of course they did. It’s the best bakery in town, it seems.

We started off with a brule of pate. Yep, that’s right, like a creme brule, in a little pot topped with a layer of crunchy caramel – but inside was chicken livers. For a creme brule addict like me it was a revelation.

For our mains, Liam had a blanchette de veau – a little rare veal steak covered in a calvados, apples and cream sauce. It was as wonderful as it sounds. I had a cassoulet. It was 3 kinds of meat (duck confit, sausage and gorgeous thick hunks of bacon) swimming in gorgeous melted pools of fat. I have never willingly ingested so much cholesterol in my life, but it was wonderful.

With our mains we got a little basket of frites with tarragon mayonnaise. They were perfection – I can not emphasize this enough – the best fries I’ve ever had, hands down. A rough crispiness on the outside, perfectly salted, meltingly soft on the inside. Perfection.

We didn’t get to desert. We would have liked to, but I was much too full of wonderful fats.

So yeah. Pretty much the best food day ever.

Best part is, since none of it was prohibitively expensive we can do it all again sometime.