Birthday Boy

The bf's birthday was last week and even though we celebrated over the weekend we also went out to a special dinner on his actual birthday.  We ate at a place I've been wanting to try for a while, Pican.  It's in the Uptown area of Oakland surrounded by other really cool new restaurants like Plum, Ozumo, Bakesale Betty, and The Punchdown.

The restaurant was very swanky inside, had a good looking bar area and an open kitchen on one wall.  We brought our own wine ($25 corkage fee) so I don't know how the drinks are, but I do know that they specialize in Bourbon.  We had fried green tomatoes as an appetizer that were dressed up all fancy with feta, radishes, and a buttermilk dressing.  I really enjoyed them but the bf thinks he could make it better and less fancy himself.  For our main courses he had the duck and I had the fried chicken.  The fried chicken was so good and to make it even better it was served with a smoked Gouda mac and cheese, yumzo!  We also got a side of andoullie and scallion hushpuppies with a vinegar sauce, these were also very good.  It was too much food for us so we ended up taking home half of the chicken and some hushpuppies.  I really liked the food and atmosphere here and will definitely try to go back!