The girls were busy at school and we didn't have any business conference calls scheduled on Friday afternoon, so Rex and I decided to slip away to drop off a donation at the
Visiting Nurses Rummage Sale in Far Hills, pick up a case of wine at Gary's and to try out
Equus, a new-ish restaurant in Bernardsville, New Jersey. Mysteriously, the Equus web site claims that they were "established 1848," but my recollection is Spring 2008. Before that, the building housed a not-very-good pizza and casual food establishment called the Stone Tavern where Rex and the girls and I had some of the worst steamed clams in our family history.
Luckily, Equus is a dramatic improvement over its predecessor. We looked over the menu and decided that, while I was ravenous from my morning workout and the descriptions were so good that we could eat almost anything on the lunch menu, we would stick with two appetizers each. I started with the Crispy Fried Calamari with sambol aioli & wasabi honey drizzle ($10)...it was quite good and the wasabi really had a nice kick to it. As my entree, I enjoyed the Tuna & Rice Paper Wrap appetizer with cucumber & green papaya slaw with nuok chem sauce ($14)...there were four pieces, enough for two people, so I shared half with Rex. Now, here comes trouble...our waiter didn't have any menus that we could take home, promising that the menus are all on the Equus web site, but so far I haven't found either of Rex's dishes online. His first appetizer was a "perfectly executed" pulled pork over cornbread pancake that disappointed Rex only because he remembered (too late) that he doesn't really enjoy cornmeal based items such as tortillas or corn muffins. Rex's second dish was his favorite -- charred tuna. I'm afraid I didn't take any pictures of the food, just the surroundings, which gave Equus just the right ambiance.
