The Palette

Yesterday, Jason's parents came to visit for a few hours. They brought tons of herb plants, so I will hopefully have some posts of recipes in which I have used my own fresh herbs! What I really like is that we can grow them inside as well during the winter, so we can do not have to resort to paying $4 for an once of herbs from the grocery store that will go bad in less than a week. Yeah!

The real reason for my post is to mention this fabulous restaurant we went to for lunch that is brand new in Sycamore. It is called the Palette and its information can be found here: http://search.homepagesdirectories.com/profile.do?listingId=86334. It is a little American Bistro located in the downstairs of a house. It appears the owners live right upstairs! The menu is reasonably priced and the food is excellent. My vegetable panini had caramelized onions, red peppers, mushrooms, basil pesto, and Mozzarella cheese on a Tomato Foccacia bread, grilled to perfection. It was soooo good! Nora tried the house soup, which is a Roasted Red Pepper soup that has chicken and corn in it; I had never heard of this combination, but it was delicious and I think I might look for a recipe now. Jason got a roast beef sandwich, Ken got pulled pork, and Nora got a ham and apple sandwich (I think...) and everyone loved them! They also come with a delicious Italian pasta salad or potato chips. The lunch menu also had salads (the Strawberry Spinach salad sounded especially good), and platters (I would like to go back and try the hummus platter). It looked like the dinner menu was a little larger with entrees as well. The drinks were also reasonably priced and I hope to try the homemade lemonade next time Jason and I go...which I am hoping will be in the near future!