Everything In Its Right Place

My brother's birthday falls on February 11 and my mother's, on February 16. That explains why F and I have been spending Valentine's Day with my family for the last few years. However, since they often bring us to cool restaurants, I don't really mind. This year, we went to Salmigondis. It is a small restaurant, but there aren't that many tables, so it doesn't feel too crowded. The space is nicely decorated, so even though it is a bit dark, it still feels warm. The noise level is appropriate and we got to listen to some cool music, from Salt-N-Pepa to David Bowie to Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
We started with an oyster covered with horseradish cream and a mussel. I usually don't like horseradish, but the cream wasn't too bad. However, I couldn't really taste the oyster, which seems a bit of a shame. I then chose to have the trout tartare which came with gravlax, cucumber and a few lingonberries. It was beautifully presented, as you can see below:

The tartare was a bit spicy: a welcome flavor. For my entree, I had deer with beets and cranberry. There was a little too much cranberry, but the beets were good. This is what my dish looked like:

My favorite course was dessert. F and I were given two desserts to share. One of them was a caramel flan. It was good and not too sweet. That was the more classic dessert. The other one was an olive oil cake which came with a parsnip semifreddo. My brother found the semifreddo to taste a lot like parsnip, but I thought it was delicious.
A pleasant setting and original food: Salmigondis provided us with both and made our evening memorable.