Amazing Experience!

I'm going to interrupt our regularly scheduled broadcast and tell you about an absolutely amazing experience we had thanks to our son, Jason, and our daughter in law, Joanne.  Jan and my 50th anniversary was in October, and little did we know that Jason and Joanne were working on a surprise that they knew would knock our socks off.  We aren't really party people so they realized it would have to be something else entirely, and let me tell you, they knocked it out of the park, both Jan and I were blown away.

They flew down Friday and we all had a nice dinner and visit together to include Jan's sister, Karen, and BIL Tom here at our site.  Karen left the next morning, and we met Jason and Joanne for a nice lunch here in Venice.

But that wasn't the main deal as nice as it was.  We then drove to Tampa to the Epicurean Hotel where they had gotten us a room, we checked in and got a glass of wine and then when we got to the room this was waiting.

Then we got together and walked across the street for our real surprise, an incredible dinner and more at Bern's Steak House!

Into the dining room we went.

As Jason perused the 195 page wine list, I was offered a liquor list with 200 bourbons in it!

We talked to our waiter that has been there for 9 years about what it was like.  He told us that there were several waiters that had been there more than 45 years!  He told us there was a 1 1/2 year training program to include every station in the kitchen to working on Bern's own farm, and this training and experience showed.  We were told the dining experience would take 3-3 1/2 hours and it was perfect.

We started by sharing appetizers, steak tartare and escargot.

So delicious!

That was followed by soup, Jan and Joanne had the French Onion soup, Jason had lobster bisque and I had vichyssoise.

I only got the onion soup, I was busy eating:-)

They shared wine as I sipped my bourbon.  Then the salads.

All dressings are made in house

Then the piece de resistance, the entrees; Joanne had a filet, Jason and I had Delmonicos, and Jan had lamb chops.  They all were awesome and exactly cooked to order, wonderful!

The lamb chops

And the rib eye

Then little did we know that after dinner they had arranged for a kitchen and wine cellar tour!  Bern's has one of the largest selections of wine anywhere, over 600,000 bottles, with more than 200 by the glass!  It was amazing!

All their steaks are cooked over charcoal, you can see the station
in the background, and it's big enough to handle 200 steaks at a time!

Just a small part of it

And that was not all, not by a long shot, we were off to the Dessert Room.  It is a maze of small private rooms made from old wine casks.

Dessert was delicious and decadent:-)

And then for our anniversary, a special little addition.

It was an evening to remember, thank you Jason and Joanne!