The ‘Hood
Somehow or another we are back in West End, but tonight we are on the “other side of the tracks”. We’re right down the street from Bacchanalia, where it just so happens that the owner of Urban Pl8 (plate, get it?) used to work. This part of the West End looks very similar to the rest of it–new condos sprinkled in with old warehouses and warehouses that have been turned into retail and eating establishments.

Why We Are Here
We’ve only been doing this blog for a few weeks (although we have been doing date night for some time, just not blogging about it), but one of the cool things is that our regular readers are starting to chime in with places that we should try. We are here tonight because our friend, who we shall call “Mags McDee”, said that it was one of her favorite places to eat.

Let’s Eat
It was a tough week at work, so we were anxious for date night to begin. We arrived around 6:15PM and the place was almost empty, which gave us our choice of tables. It’s a good thing we got there early, because it was packed when we left. We opted to eat inside (they have an outside area which must be great in the spring/fall) and ordered two beers, a Lagunitas Pils for Eve and a Bison Chocolate Stout (organic!) for me. Both were enjoyed and the organic stout was very smooth.

We picked the spinach and artichoke dip as an appetizer and it was delivered a few minutes later. Unlike most artichoke dips, there were huge chunks of artichoke inside and it was messy trying to keep it on the pita slices, but the dish was so yummy that it didn’t matter that the sauce was running down my arm as I ate it.

Our main course was stir-fry brown rice with veggies and tofu. Urban Pl8 has many vegetarian options, but they have “animal” on the menu if you want that as well. We had a hard time choosing what to have as everything looked great, and we were not disappointed by our meal. The stir-fry was plentiful and it was easy for us to share.

Have you ever heard of the “paleo” diet? There are many paleo menu selections at Urban Pl8. Evidently, paleo is food the way the cavemen ate it–no processed wheat or cheeses.

Our dessert was paleo fruit cobbler, which was advertised as mixed berry by our server Andrew, but was really strawberry-rhubarb. It had no added wheat products and the cobbler crust was made with almond powder instead of wheat. I’m not so sure that the cavemen ate almond instead of wheat, but we’ll say that we ate a paleo dish while we were at Urban Pl8.

What We Liked
Once again, you could taste the “fresh” in everything. The kitchen is the centerpiece of the restaurant and you can see them whipping up your dinner while you wait for it. The items on the menu are reasonably priced and everything that was being delivered to our fellow diners looked great.

What We Didn’t Like
There was no wheat beer (Eve’s favorite) on the menu. The manager came over and apologized for that omission, and assured us that the next time she makes a beer order, she will take care of the oversight. We even got into a discussion about our favorite wheat beers, and it looks like Sweetwater Heffe will be on the beer menu soon.