Now that Autumn is officially here, it's a great time to take weekend day trips. I highly recommend visiting Princeton, NJ. It's about an hour south of NYC, and boasts a pretty downtown with tons of dining options and boutiques.
We heard amazing things about a particular tapas-style restaurant called Mistral, which we absolutely adored. We sat at the bar, which I highly recommend so you can watch the skilled chefs keep their cool and turn around dishes, which look like works of art. We ordered about five or six dishes. Here is what we loved: start with the Pan Con Tomate, a fried piece of bread with fresh tomatoes, herbs, savory jam, and goat cheese. This is a good take on a Catalan-style tapas; it's crunchy, salty, and gives you bursts of fresh, juicy tomatoes.
We loved the Garganelli Pasta with borage pesto and feta. The Blue Crab Salad with green curry, peanuts, coconut, puffed rice was also a light and surprisingly complex dish. One of our favorites hands-down was the Grilled Haricot Vert with king oyster mushroom and crispy shallots. This will knock your socks off. Salty, umami, and depth of flavor. In fact, as I write, this, I'm trying to figure out when we can return to Mistral!
Mistral
66 Witherspoon St, Princeton, NJ 08542
(609) 688-8808
