I should preface this post by stating a fact:
We are not fancy people.
There are few things that make me feel more out of place than a fancy restaurant. Somehow, everyone knows that we don’t belong there. I’m never wearing the right thing. I don’t know which piece of silverware I’m supposed to use first. I laugh too loudly.
That being said, our King Estate experience was a little awkward.
King Estate Winery is an enormous, gorgeous winery with an all-star restaurant that we’ve been hearing about since we moved here. Actually, we had a bottle of King Estate back when we lived in Kentucky! But we’ve heard from a lot of people that the food there is amazing. However, after looking at the menu, I knew that we would never be able to afford to eat there, so I figured we’d go for a wine tasting someday. Then my incredibly generous employers gave us a gift card, so we headed to King Estate for brunch last Sunday.
So far, my only Oregon winery experience has been at Sweet Cheeks, which is very casual, low-key, and inexpensive (free wine tasting!). As we approached King Estate, we were immediately intimidated by its grandness. It is huge. And beautiful. Of course, we’re rolling up in our bright blue Mazda, listening to that super classy Nelly and Florida Georgia Line song (which I immediately turned off because this seems like a place where you need to cruise up listening to Mozart) as we’re parking next to luxury vehicles.
So I’m already intimidated. Luckily, we got seated right away with a nice view on the patio, despite our lack of reservation (yes, hostess, I felt your judgment). But I still felt like everyone was watching us. How could they tell that we aren’t rolling in the dough? Well, I’m pretty sure that everyone knew that all my accessories came from Target. Or from a free University of Kentucky event giveaway (“CATS go to Hollywood” sunglasses for the win). And I kept pulling my full-sized DSLR camera out of my bag for pictures. Even regular poor people have iPhones.
Anywho, first, let’s talk about the mimosas. We were there for brunch, and neither of us really wanted to drink wine with our breakfast foods, so we opted for mimosas, thinking those would be cheaper anyway. Wrong. For two tiny mimosas, we paid $23. Twenty-three dollars. What? We didn’t discover this until we got our check at the end of the meal. I’m pretty sure we could’ve had an entire bottle of wine for $23.
But let’s get back to the food. Since we had a gift card, we decided to get an appetizer. Cinnamon brown butter donuts sounded way too delicious to resist, so we ordered a round of those. I’m expecting full-sized donuts for $7. Instead, we get a tiny plate with 6 tiny donut holes. Absolutely delicious? Yes. Super small portions? Yes. Luckily, they also brought out a plate of bread, so we worked on filling our hungry stomachs with that for a while.
When it came time to order the main course, we both wanted French Toast (the only real brunchy item on the menu), but thought it would be silly to get the same thing, so Eric convinced me to order the smoked salmon and scallop sausage. And now I know that I don’t actually like salmon. I’ve liked it the few times I’ve cooked it (when it is covered with flavors of other things), but never in a restaurant. So Eric generously shared half of his french toast with me while he ate all of my meal.
But let’s talk about the french toast for a minute. When they brought it out, we both started laughing. This could literally be eaten in 4 bites. And for $12 french toast, we were expecting something a little bigger. Of course, this brought about a discussion of the glassware and plates being included in our purchase (I had conveniently brought a large purse that would have easily carried away all of our complementary dishes), which gave me a fit of the giggles, surely confirming everyone’s suspicions that we weren’t actually wealthy, as I’m pretty sure extremely wealthy people don’t burst into loud giggle fits during brunch. The french toast was incredibly delicious, but left both of us very hungry. (We also started laughing when the woman behind us said she planned on splitting the french toast with her kids. Good luck.)
So, now that we’ve had an appetizer, two plates of bread, and our meals, we’re still hungry. So we order a dessert. Oh my goodness. The ice cream in this dessert rocked my world. The flourless chocolate cake was tasty (Eric deemed it “too chocolately,” but he also says I add too many chocolate chips to my cookies, so we don’t count that opinion), but the strawberry balsamic ice cream was incredible.
I braced myself for our bill at the end of the meal. $72. For a brunch that left us a little hungry and mega sugar-buzzed. It was incredibly delicious, but I’m just never going to be the kind of person who is okay with paying $72 for brunch for 2. That’s just how it is, folks.
Believe it or not we still have a bit left on our gift card, so I think we’ll head back to enjoy some actual wine and dessert for our anniversary next week. We’ll be sure to look classy.
-Ally
Becca says
So the purse was a good purchase. Target is always the epitome of classy and fancy.