a rare splurge life changes when you go back to school. especially if you're a homebody to begin with, it's that much harder to actually go out, and when your boyfriend moves to the east coast and then on top of that you're basically a cheapskate, it's impossible to cajole yourself to spend money on anything but plane tickets. but now that class is officially over (and the unending years of research begin), I feel like I'm about to rejoin the world of the living and drinking and spending. To celebrate the end of our first year, a few of my classmates and I dressed up and went to frisson. see, I love a good restaurant. but I don't know a single good restaurant in SF where it's not the place you would fit in better in jeans than a cocktail dress. so I enlisted the help of tablehopper, who will offer a personalized recommendation in exchange for a recap of the evening. so I sent her the following email. you'll have to excuse the enthusiasm, i might still be reeling from the studying.

Frisson was absolutely fabulous!! It was exactly what we were looking for. The decor is nice without being too dated (yet) and there was a DJ spinning pretty good music. I was pleased to see they had a bottle of (inexpensive) prosecco on the menu, which we had in lieu of champagne. I had the en fuego cocktail, which was based on a pomegranate tequila -- yum! Not very strong though, which was good as I had to drive everyone home. My whiskey-loving friend was pretty pleased with her manhattan which also had pomegranate in it. It was good enough she said she would come back just for that. We started with a few appetizers -- the japanese sea bream sashimi (even some of the sushi-virgins liked it), pork croquettes (yummy mashed potatoes), artichokes, and scallops. I think the scallops came in a dollop of some sort of creamy aioli which was okay but not amazing. The entrees were universally loved. I had the short ribs, which just fell apart when I put my fork in. Personally, I think I had the best thing on the menu, but I bet the rest of my table would beg to differ. They were served with a puree that had vanilla in it -- the flavors were unexpected and stunning. I kept getting everyone else to try the vanilla.. Also at the table: duck breast, salmon, rack of lamb, ribeye. I think the portion size was great, although if I had an entire appetizer and entree, I might not have had room for dessert. So up until this point, everything came really quickly. Maybe we were just having too much fun so time passed quickly -- but then we ordered dessert and maybe 20 minutes went by with no sign of food. Eventually the waitress apologized about the delay and told us that our desserts would be on the house, and we would be sent a bottle of dessert wine! (This kind of thing makes me always wish that I had ordered multiple desserts! Is that terrible?) They brought us 6 glasses of dessert wine, of three each of two different types. Again, I'm pretty sure I ordered the most delicious thing on the menu -- the chocolate and cardamom pot de creme. It tasted roughly like what you'd expect gingerbread to taste like in heaven. And it came with these cookie sandwiches with the most delicious icing inside. I also snagged a bite of the chocolate souffle (the sorbets accompanying it were delicious), the blackberry bread pudding, and the warm cookies and milkshake. Oh, for a moment I thought I was hallucinating and re-experiencing my dessert, but then I remembered that I'm baking banana bread. It wasn't nearly as expensive as we feared -- of course, we didn't have to pay for dessert. It came out to about $60/person, although in retrospect I wished I had tipped on top of the included gratuity since we had such a fabulous time. I hope that doesn't make me a terrible person.