Celery Seed Warning

Am I the sole person out there who eats out only when invited by friends who are flush enough to pick up the check? The problem is that the most generous and frequent inviter in my life prefers restaurants that I don't like. Too tired to cook, however, last night, too grateful to look a gift horse in the mouth, and too broke to buy groceries, I accepted his invitation to, gulp, dinner at the Boca Ale House on Yamato. Suffice it to say, it's very hard to find something good to eat at this place, and I don't care whose paying: I am not going to waste anyone's $20+ on an "entree" at the Boca Ale House. 

Twice before I ordered the off-menu grilled cheese and tomato sandwich, which is very good, by the way.  Last night, though, I wanted more veggies than that offered, and tried a new item on this menu, an Apple-Walnut salad. The good news is that this is an all-Romaine salad. The bad news is that the dressing is loaded with celery seeds. If you like celery seeds, go for it, but if not, beware.  Truth be told, I asked about the dressing while ordering the salad, and the waitress told me that the servers called it simply, "the apple-walnut dressing," I presumed not because those were its ingredients but because it went with that salad. So, I elected the dressing intended for the salad. Not so good. I can tolerate some celery seed in a cole slaw, but this was just too much.

The salad is good, however, even if the scattering of gorgonzola (and walnuts) was a little stingy. On the flip side, the allotment of dried cranberries was too generous, as the salad dressing and chopped apple trained it toward the sweet anyway. Still, this salad looked much better than the plates of everything else drifting by.  Next month is my birthday, so perhaps I will pick the restaurant then.  In the meantime, I will ferret out the best options on the menus of  the bar-themed, and corporate restaurants that my friend frequents.