Belated Birthday Dinner at Balmoral

May 12, 2023

After work today, Liz and I pushed through late Friday traffic to get out to the suburbs. Liz was meeting up with her knitting group to meet up at a local nursery. And I was killing a bit of time, visiting with Joe, until we all reconvened together for dinner (a belated birthday celebration for Liz).

I got to hang out a bit with Joe, just the two of us. And we mostly chatted about learning new languages, the subtleties of Spanish (caliente vs picante), and of course… Star Trek.

After a bit, the two of us headed over to Balmoral, where we were meeting with Mike for a pre-dinner drink.

On arriving, it was raining slightly… but we still got greeted like royalty. I was definitely not expecting this, on walking through the front door.

A very wide, and very impressive, selection of whisky. I had a hard time picking, and decided to go with a Bunnahabhain 16 (definitely one of our favorite tasting experiences, during our Scotland trip).

Interesting tidbit 1: I think a while ago, Liz got to meet Joe for the first time at this very restaurant. And it’s also where she got to taste different scotch whiskies that were outside of the peaty/smoky realm. And I daresay that’s when she got the spark to start exploring scotch whisky a lot more, and started going down her sherry bomb phase.

Interesting tidbit 2: I think Balmoral is were Uncle David picked up some takeout for us, back in 2021 when we did a whisky tasting at their house.

A bit of haggis and toast, along with some garlic mushrooms.

Bangers and mash.

I’m out of practice of getting good group photos. L to R it’s Liz, Mike, Michelle, Patty, Najwa, and Joe.

Liz got some incredibly generous gift certificates (one for Balmoral, and one for Binny’s). And it was a really lovely thing, that everyone trekked out to do a belated birthday celebration for her.

This is a fun group, and we had a lovely time chatting and enjoying some delicious Scottish fare.