Lanie’s Cafe – Chicken Piccata

This past weekend was a busy one for my wife and I. By the time Sunday dinner came around we decided to actually eat out at a nice local restaurant. I say actually eat out because, although we do order food from Lanie’s often enough that one of the girls at the front knows me by name, we rarely sit down and eat in.

The weekend started with us finally getting to the bottom of a rather large project of cleaning up bins we had stored in the basement. We even managed to get all the (now empty) bins up in the attic or in a closet for storage. We were so far ahead that we even swapped out the summer clothes in our closet for the fall/winter clothes stored in the attic. It was quite an accomplishment. We hadn’t seen some parts of the floor in our room in a long time. When we were all done we had a lot of trash to go out and a lot of stuff to give away to the local Salvation Army.

Sunday we decided to take it a little bit easy since we were so far ahead. We went to a matinee to see The Dark Knight Rises. After that I dropped my wife off to get her nails done and went home. She sent me a BBM letting me know that a friend of ours wanted to take some of the stuff we were giving away. So I packed up my car and headed out. It was mostly weights and such which wasn’t easy lugging up to a third floor apartment. It also included a massage mat. Well, apparently we had the wrong power cord set aside with it. I got a call from my wife that she was almost done and that she was pretty sure where the right power cord was. We went home and grabbed it and headed back out. This time we had the right cord.

By the time we left for home, it was getting to be dinner time. We thought about going to Joe’s Crab Shack again, but they had a 2 hour wait! That just wasn’t going to cut it. We’d be seated around 8PM at that rate and probably not eat until 8:30. Instead we went to Lanie’s Cafe which is a lot closer to home anyway.

It’s a nice little place with an outdoor patio area, a bar area, and a more traditional dining area. Since it was a little chilly, we opted to eat inside. The lighting is a little bit dim, which is a nice atmosphere. The only problem is that I need reading glasses as it is, but in dim light it’s almost impossible to read a menu. We could have ordered our usual take-out but we really wanted to have a better sit down meal. Fortunately, Linda was able to read the menu. Linda suggested the Chicken Piccata because it is pretty much the same as a dish I like at Buca Di Beppo. She wavered between several dishes before eventually decided on the Crab Stuffed Haddock – an odd choice for her considering she doesn’t care for fish much.

We ordered mozzarella sticks as an appetizer. Linda also had a salad. I passed. I’m still not quite bold enough for salad.  The mozzarella sticks were great – as they always are. When our meals arrived, I was surprised at just how big Linda’s dish was. It didn’t look at all appetizing to me. When she ordered it I said I was going to try some. When it arrived I was a bit nervous about trying it. Then she tried it. She didn’t like it at all. In fact, she called our waitress over, who then called over a manager. They ended up taking it off and Linda didn’t bother getting another entree since she was reasonably full from the mozzarella and the salad.

My Chicken Piccata was a bit larger than I anticipated as well and came with a side of Penne pasta. I think they went a bit heavy on the capers (which I don’t like) and perhaps a bit light on the lemon. Still, they were good enough that I would order them again. They weren’t quite as good as the lemon chicken at Buca Di Beppo though.

Despite some minor hiccups, it was a good meal. Linda probably should have gone with the Prime Rib or one of the other dishes she thought about, but she didn’t leave hungry. After we got home, we finished watching The Runaways on our Roku and then went to bed feeling accomplished. It was a long weekend, but at least we ended it on a more relaxing note than it started.