Dudes Provide Cake by Candlelight

Best song randomly heard on the radio today: Metal and Steel, Bob Schneider

The theme for our happy hour today was lightening, with alcoholic accompaniment by Andre Brunel Cotes du Rhone Villages Cuvee Sabrine 2007.

Surrounded, as we are here, on two sides by water masses, we enjoyed a show of thunderstorms from three directions: out to sea, on the sound and due south.

Mother Nature was metaphorically wrapping her angry arms around us and we welcomed the embrace, but especially the show.

And what a show it was!

Double-forked lightening, horizontal lightening, heat lightening, we seldom went more than 90 seconds before seeing the next hit somewhere.

Had we been the easily-frightened types, the Cotes du Rhone was right there to soothe us.

As it was, it was right there for purely pleasurable reasons (yum, is that licorice on the finish?), as well as practical ones (hey, we can make a candle-holder for the porch out of it now!).

A couple of hours later, the lightening gave way to a gentle rain, our signal that happy hour was finished and it was time to get cleaned up for our dinner date.

Thing 2 and I were meeting the artist and his wife from last night for dinner at a locally-favored restaurant, Food Dudes.

Having doubts about a place with a name that sounds like it originated in a frat house, we were nonetheless assured that it was a gathering spot for locals for good reason.

It was small, in a strip center, had loads of local art on the walls and was filled with non-tourist looking faces; we were clearly the only ones who didn't know everyone else.

As it turned out, by the time we left, we knew more than a few of them, as various people were introduced to us and joined the conversation.

The Food Dudes showed their Asian influences with the fresh-tasting appetizer special we got.

It was a crab and avocado spring roll, more crab than avocado and enhanced by the cuke/cilantro salsa and hot chile sauce.

Appetites piqued by that course, everyone else ordered fish, but I was led astray by the siren song of the Dudes' south of the border influences.

I was most curious about their unique and colorful-sounding nachos: green chile con queso over blue and white corn chips, with roasted local corn salsa, house-made pico de gallo, sour cream and scallions.

Not a trace of cheddar, lettuce or jalapeno in sight.

Yes, please, I'd like those.

And they were everything I'd hoped they'd be.

The green chile con queso was worlds beyond melted cheese, the roasted corn salsa bathed in that queso made me forget my fondness for black beans on nachos and their pico de gallo provided the absent peppers' heat.

I will never think of nachos quite the same again.

Thanks, Food Dudes. How did I ever doubt you?

Their dessert specialty is 12-layer chocolate cake (it's actually yellow cake with chocolate icing) but Thing 2 and I were way too full to consider anything more.

Our new local buds insisted we take a piece home to share on the porch later and who were we to argue with local custom?

They were doing the same and they don't even have an ocean to admire as they eat theirs like we do.

Or, I'll bet, an Andre Brunel bottle candle holder flickering just enough candlelight to ensure we don't miss a crumb.