Oceanside Lunch with Sony’s WX9

After our amazing morning running around the Oceanside Farmers’ Market playing with our new Sony Cyber-shot WX9s, we went to the beach to enjoy a fabulous meal prepared with market ingredients by Chef Chris Ivens-Brown. I recognized many of the products we just saw at the market. Chef Chris was particularly excited about the arugula flowers he used to top the grilled vegetable bruschetta.

There was so much food! Besides the bruschetta, there were short ribs,  rotisserie chicken, crab cakes, salmon with roasted fennel, mini turkey club sandwiches, cheese and dessert!

I really enjoyed the rotisserie chicken. It was served with pickled mushrooms, cucumber dill wedge salad, fingerling potato salad and grilled baby artichokes.

I piled on so much on my plate that I had to go back for the cheese plate and leave my turkey club on the side. The Maryland jumbo lump crab cakes were delicious with tons of crab. I liked the apple and celery root slaw it was served with as well. The cedar wood seared wild salmon was served with a wild rice salad, cauliflower puree and anise sauce (complemented the roasted fennel).

Mmm, this sandwich was served with blue cheese baker’s chips. I was so full tasting everything that after my bite of this sandwich, I only really ate the bacon and turkey (I don’t know how other food writers do it sometimes). I almost regretted the fish taco I had at the farmers’ market. Almost.

I couldn’t resist getting a small cheese plate– no, really, check out how little I took! The cheese was paired with a lavender honey and various fruit compotes and chutneys. I learned to love chutneys while in London and was very fond of the English-born Chef Chris.

I haven’t been able to give up dessert yet and definitely wasn’t giving it up now. Chef Chris dazzled us with his strawberry lemonade earlier and we almost mistook the strawberry-rhubarb Prosecco consomme basil soup  as more lemonade when he poured it over the hazelnut nougat semi freddo. When we tasted it individually, a great debate broke out if we could get more Prosecco in it for a cocktail. I suggested a nice rum would go well with the strawberry lemonade. Vodka or gin would probably work as well!

Chef Chris titled the menu “spice, umami, pickled, salty, sweet and savory” and we definitely hit all those flavors.

I really like using the WX9 for panoramic pictures. It’s so easy to take the shots and have the camera auto stitch. I’m going to also try to use the burst feature in the future.

Stay tuned for a couple  more posts including a great dinner and how to WIN the Sony WX9 available to the public later this month.