Alba

Not Jessica; the restaurant on East Sixth and Des Moines Street. Sorry, guys.

I experienced a new and invigorating dining experience last night--and it didn't involve the food.

For awhile now I've wanted to try out an East Village restaurant called Alba, so The Boyfriend and I decided to "celebrate" my cancelled shift at J.Crew (the economy can be blamed for this) as a good excuse to get a nice dinner and try a new place. I guess the bad parking access should've been the first hint that this would not bode well. When we finally made it into the restaurant, I could barely see where I was going. Supposedly there are eclectic, vintage doors hanging from the ceiling, but who knows: the table was lit with the light from a streetlamp and a dim candle at the tables. The waitress seated us as far away from the rest of the other diners as possible (and it's a small venue). Call me old-fashioned and traditional, but when the bruschetta in their 'Small Plates' section has neither basil, fresh mozzarella, or even tomatoes but instead a selection of beans, something is awry. I searched the menu for something to jump out at me and nothing really did. TB said he could order the NY Strip (something you can order anywhere) but at $25, we already knew that a tastier and more elegant version could be found for the same price at Bistro Montage. I genuinely felt trapped. We already had the water, the menus, the table, the waitress... but then, we did something I have never done before: He pulled a few dollars out of his pocket, and placed them on the table, and then we got up and walked out. Passing our waitress on the way out, we said, "Thank you, but this isn't what we were looking for."

And that is the truth.

She'll probably think that as a young couple we didn't want to shell out some bucks for an elegant dinner. But in reality, I didn't want to feel locked into a restaurant's contemporary and experimental American food concept, and have to pay for something that just wasn't what I wanted. And it was liberating.