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scotica came over for a belated birthday dinner, enabling me to shanghai her and the downstairs tenant into helping me cart the new grill up to the deck. (It comes unassembled and I was carrying it up in pieces, but the main grill unit still needed at least two people.) Then we went off to Cesars on Piedmont, the sister-restaurant to the tapas place I ate at before the Bryn Terfel concert in April. (Hmm, I don't seem to have reviewed it separately from the mention in the locked dating-filter post.) The Piedmont Ave branch specializes in charcuterie, so we focused the meal around the tabla pequeña, the smaller version of their assorted meats platter with seven different varieties. We accompanied this with the three-cheese platter and a salad of asparagus, cauliflower, and fava beans. Since there are seven individual charcuterie items listed in the menu, I'm assuming they correspond to the seven items on our platter:

jamón serrano reserva (a prosciutto-type very thinly sliced dry ham) Very nice; a delicate flavor and not too salty. We had it first on sourdough, but it was truly excellent when we came back to it later and wrapped it around chunks of the driest of the cheeses (the one I think must have been the tronchon).

cecina (a thinly sliced air-dried beef) Best enjoyed all by itself, skipping even the bread. A nice rich flavor and a nice change from the more oily salami-type meats.

We then cleansed our palates with what looked like the softest of the cheeses and must have been the roncal because it had the described buttery texture (and because I thought it tasted of sheep's milk). I really liked it, especially the texture, although

scotica wasn't as fond of the sharp aftertaste.

If I recall correctly, we moved on next to one of the sausage/pate-type items. The menu lists two items that might fit the description: fuet and butifarra, but I'm not sure I can match them with the two items we had closely enough to distinguish. At any rate, these were quite mild for sausages, and turned out to be overpowered by the sourdough and better on their own.

We moved on to the medium-textured cheese, which would have been the pimentino, a goat cheese with a firm but creamy texture. It was a cheese that made me think of European marketplace lunches where you buy chunks of the local bread and cheese and see where they take you.

I think this was when we delved into the tocino de pato (smoked duck breast). A pity there were only three small pieces, because this was absolutely delicious. It stood up to the sourdough nicely, but was also good plain. (We saved the last piece to share at the very end of the meal.)

The next meats were the two dry salami-types, which must be the menu's chorizo pamplona and chorizo soria, but again the web site's descriptions aren't detailed enough for me to tell which was which. These definitely needed the sourdough as a base. I was expecting them to be a bit spicier (especially the more reddish one, which I figured would signal a fair amount of capsicum) but were mild again. In fact, overall, given that I don't tend to like very spicy foods, the fact that I keep describing things as "mild" may be a warning sign for those who prefer things stronger.

When we got to the third cheese -- the aforementioned tronchon --

scotica thought it needed combining with other flavors. It was fairly strong (in the well-aged sense) by itself but when wrapped up in the jamón serrano there was an instant taste-party in my mouth. Perfect combination. Not quite as good wrapped in the cecina, but it was worth a try.

A majority of the reviews I'd read on yelp.com had recommended the orange-caramel bread pudding dessert, so we ordered that and the crema de chocolate (pot au creme by another name). The chocolate was delicious, but the bread pudding was OHMIGHODTHISISBLEEPINGFABULOUS. The bitter-orange caramel sauce was what made it perfection. We decided we absolutely have to go back again if only for another serving of the bread pudding.

So a number of the yelp.com reviews indicate that the service is ... inconsistent. I believe that people have had variable experiences, but ours was on the excellent end. Our orders were taken promptly, brought promptly, and delicious. When we'd finished the last spoonful of crema de chocolate the bill appeared with such promptness that we looked around to see if there was a crowd waiting for tables, but without any sense that we were being pressured to leave. The only symptom of any superciliousness was the waitress's pointed insistence that they "don't serve regular coffee" but that she could bring us caffe americano. Yeah, whatever.

All in all, a nice birthday dinner.