I love my class!

Wow, it’s been a while huh?

And I still have so many posts to write! I have been out and about for these past few weeks dining out with Eric and some new friends, and have been getting soooooooo fat. Seriously.

Well I can tell you that although I have been getting out of shape, (perfect for my Italy trip in 3 weeks, huh?) I have been having a blast!

Last week was the start of ITLDP Training. Being an early start in this program, I have been working alone for the past 6 months and I couldn’t be happier to have others with me at Raritan! I no longer have lonely lunches at work and can procrastinate like the best of them!

With two weeks to get fully acquainted with my entire class during training, we all fully took advantage of our corporate cards and went out to team bonding dinners-yum!

For the first week, we went to a variety of restaurants- Evelyn’s, Cheesecake, Ichiban, Tulas- but I would have to say that Evelyn’s and Tula’s was most memorable- and not to mention right next to each other!

Evelyn’s was our first dinner as a group.

Located in New Brunswick, it was a short drive from our hotel (and a short walk from Stuff Yer Face) and we were all happy to get to know each other better. Although loud and rowdy, the atmosphere was perfect for our initial gathering and the food proved to be quite interesting.

Although not the best food I’ve had (I got the tilapia and had scales in my dish- if you know me, you know how much that grosses me out), I really enjoyed the company and ended up really liking Evelyn’s. Not the best quality or the freshest ingredients, I didn’t enjoy my food too much- but you can bet that I enjoyed the company! Perhaps not a restaurant I’d visit again, I would say it was the perfect restaurant for a hot summer night.

I love our class!

Price:$$

Food: C+

Ambiance:B

Service:C+

Next door is Tula’s. Although the food is a little bit better (although not that great- and very overpriced), we had the privilege to celebrate one of our classmate’s birthday! Although, not necessarily the best place to have a loud and rowdy crowd (we actually got yelled at, and plenty of dirty looks) we had a blast and the servers were very accommodating.

I first got a lemonade at the bar- it was disgusting. The tart lemon juice mixed with a little water was awful and I quickly switched to water. As for my entrée, I got the Wild Mushroom Ravioli (it wasn’t on the menu but it had truffle oil!) while I got the fried calamari to start. The calamari was awful. I used to say that you couldn’t really go wrong with calamari but my calamari was pretty bad. Hard and extremely salty, the rings of rubber were not appetizing and I was a bit worried about my ravioli to come.

The ravioli was OK. Definitely not worth the price I paid (thanks J&J), the tart eggplant/tomato salad on top threw me off a bit.

All in all, the food was pretty bad. The décor and ambiance misled me and made me think that we were perhaps going to get a good meal that night. False.

In the end though, I had a blast. We got to celebrate a birthday, be loud and obnoxious and in the end, I got to become even closer with my class!

Did I mention that I love my class?

Food: C-

Price: $$

Ambiance: B+

Service: B+