Sperry's

So as you may know, I reviewed Sperry's on Caroline Street for brunch a while back, but I hadn't been there for dinner yet. I thought it was about time to change that and one beautiful Sunday night my date and I headed on over. We walked in through the front door and it was so empty I actually asked the hostess if they were open that night. She said yes and asked if we wanted to eat outside...boy was I wrong about it being empty, turns out the party was in back.

Sperry's has the most amazing patio, it's not only huge it's got this exotic feel for it with lush colored fabric and chandeliers hanging from the tent. The chairs are gold (love it) and the stone work is just beautiful. In fact, here's a picture of the view from our table, not the greatest quality but it gives a general idea.

With plants and trees surrounding you, you felt like you were in this little tropical escape in the middle of downtown Saratoga. I loved the atmosphere as much as I loved the meal. Speaking of which, let's get to the food.

My date and I were looking at the menu, trying to figure out an appetizer to choose and they all looked so amazing that we couldn't pick. So to fix that, we decided to order four and call it a meal. How's that for best of both worlds.

Before our meal we got two steaming hot cheesy popovers. I can't get enough of these guys - which is why it's good they only serve one per person or else I wouldn't have any room for dinner! Smart move Sperry's.

So all of our appetizers came at once, which was a little overwhelming considering the amount of table space we had, but I was still really excited about the feast we had before us. One of the appetizers that we got was the Seared Tuna Tartare.

Underneath you can start to see the asian guacamole and tropical salsa. The two were so delicious with the tuna that I kept trying to get everything on one bite...not always possible but still worth the effort. The tuna was so delicate and delicious, light and savory enough to be exactly what I wanted on an early summer evening.

Now let's move on to the Artichoke Fritters. When I saw these on the menu I imagined a sort of fried artichoke-potato-latke sorta thing. Not the case...what we got was so much better.

These were lightly fried artichoke hearts with balsamic greens, sundried tomatoes, and meyer lemon aioli. The fritters were fried lightly enough that you could still taste the subtle flavor of the artichoke hearts and appreciate how well they paired with the tangy tomato and lemon. Yum.

Next: an order of Crispy Calamari with a Thai chili lime sauce.

Though this dish came with that cute little ladle of sauce, there's actually a lot of sauce on the plate underneath the calamari (it's there I promise). Don't get me wrong, the sauce was amazing, but putting it on the plate before the calamari made everything lean towards the soggy side of the "crispy" scale. It also meant you didn't have much control over your sauce to calamari ratio. 

Last but not least, we snuck in a side dish of Sugar Snap Peas with shallots and mint to get some green in our meal.

I love sugar snap peas, and Sperry's cooked these perfectly so that they weren't overcooked and still had some snap to them. The mint was an interesting touch (and there was only a touch of it, I think maybe I would have wanted a little more?) that took the flavor from average to slightly exotic and I loved using what little popover I had left to soak up the broth at the bottom of the bowl. 

By the end of our absolutely amazing meal we certainly did not have enough room for dessert, but we were not uncomfortably full by any means. I would say that four appetizers (or three appetizers and one side if you're being particular) is the perfect amount for two people, and very reasonably priced as well. Our extremely friendly waitress humored us though and let us peek at the dessert menu...next time Sperry's...who knows maybe we'll get four desserts for dinner, just for kicks.