Post graduation celebration at the Wine House

Graduation selfie with my buddy Jon
(photo credit Jonathan Manuel)

Yay! I'm finally done with graduate school round 2! I've been working on my Masters in Public Policy from George Mason University for the past couple of years and as much as I like learning new things, it feels so great to be done with school.

Since I was told that the commencement ceremony could possibly run over two hours, I didn't really make plans to go out for a celebratory dinner since we would not have eaten until after 9:30pm - and that would have assumed we would have left right after the ceremony.

After pictures with family and giving celebratory hugs to some of my fellow graduates, Hubs and I went over to one of our favorite places in Fairfax, the Wine House.

Hubs and I came across this place through a LivingSocial deal  in 2011. It's a cute little wine shop and restaurant with a really knowledgeable staff. Because we enjoy the food and wine so much, it's become one of our go to places.

I don't know if it was a good or bad that my graduate program was run from GMU's Arlington campus. Had it been at the Fairfax campus, I might have spent my pre-class time at the Wine House.

Normally, I would go through what we ate by the course, but Hubs my phone battery was running really low and I didn't have the chance to take pictures. :-(

The food at the Wine House is absolutely delicious! I can sincerely say that we haven't had a bad meal there the times that we went. The food is always has great flavors and comes in filling portions. For my post-graduation dinner, I had the rack of lamb. Hubs is not a huge fan of lamb, but he said it probably was the best lamb dish he's ever had.

The last time Hubs and I went to the Wine House, it was in February for their Valentine's dinner. It was a three course dinner, where we got to pick from a selection for each course and opted for the wine paring as well.

Dinner started with a cute little amuse bouche of Gravlox salmon with a little mustard sauce. Since we both loved oysters, hubs and I each got a the panko breaded fried oysters. We both were surprised by the size of the appetizer; there were so many oysters on each plate, I was afraid that I would get full from that alone. For our main course, I got the veal shank, which was HUGE! I didn't have enough stomach space for all of it, but the leftovers made for the best lunch the following day. For desert, I had the chocolate cardinal, a rich and creamy mousse on top of a chocolate cake and raspberries with a side of fresh whipped cream.

Fried oysters with a mango sauce
and celery root and carrot salad

Gravlox appetizer

Veal Shank

Chocolate Cardinal