Otom

On Saturday night, Matt and I had dinner with a friend of mine from high school, Anne, and her husband, Dan. Anne came up with a great list of restaurants to try, which made for a difficult decision. After a little research, we decided on Otom. Otom is the sibling restaurant to Moto (the name Otom is the mirror reflection of Moto), the restaurant chef Homaro Cantu made famous with his high tech cuisine. The selection at Otom is far from high tech, it is more a combination of sheik lounge and comfort foods. I believe that this restaurant was supposed to be a little more laid back, less formal, and less expensive than Moto.

We all started with appetizers. Matt and I both had the soup of the day: a Thai infused butternut squash soup, while Anne had the mac n cheese, and Dan had butter poached shrimp. While my soup was delicious (probably the best part of the meal), I should have tried the mac n cheese because it is one of my favorite dishes.

For dinner I had the short rib ravioli, which was supposedly one of their most popular dishes. It was good, probably a little too sweet for me, but something different, which is always fun. Matt enjoyed his jambalaya, but the dish had a little too much craw fish for his liking. Anne had the roasted butternut squash and tofu and Dan had the duck. I think we all enjoyed our meals, but nothing was spectacular. For dessert each couple shared the cookies and milk. The cookie reminded us of a flattened cookie from Cookie Crisp cereal. Again, not great, not bad though either.

For the amount of money we spent, I felt like the portions are fairly small and more foo foo than your traditional comfort food. Anne and I both decided it was a restaurant worth trying, but someplace we will never visit again.

The best part of the meal was being able to catch up with Anne and Dan, who we have not seen in a long time. They are expecting their first baby in October so it was fun to exchange stories about our experiences with pregnancy thus far and reminisce about old times. Congratulations to you, we hope to have dinner again soon!