Incredible night of food

First off, sorry I don't have pictures to go with this post. We didn't think about it until we were finished eating. : (

Our friend Jeff is out from the city this weekend, and so for dinner, he told us to choose from two options: he would take us to Grand Lux Cafe (we love it) or we could go shopping to make a spectacular dinner at home with seafood. Because we had just gone out the night before to La Marmite, a fabulous French restaurant here, where we had practically indulged in bacchanalia, we opted for the latter, since we could control the carbs of a meal we made ourselves.

So we were off to the store for some meal items and then to the seafood shop for the seafood. When we got to the seafood shop, we bought 2 1/2 lbs of shrimp, 3 lbs of King crab legs, and 1 lb of scallops.

When we got home, we began the prep for the meal. Jeff and I prepared the small Yukon Gold potatoes we had purchased, cleaning them and cutting them in half. I chopped onions for the potatoes and shrimp. Jeff snapped asparagus spears and I prepped skillets and started a very large pot of water boiling for the crab. Jeff thawed the shrimp and I cleaned it. Threw the potatoes into the microwave to steam-cook them to near-done.

We prepared the asparagus to be roasted in a very hot oven and once it was started, Jess came in to prepare the shrimp, as scampi. He makes a terrific scampi that beats anything you'd ever have at even the nicest restaurant. While he was doing that, I fried the potatoes in the iron skillet with the onions, butter and olive oil, then cleaned out the skillet and started again with basil-infused olive oil and butter and simply dried and salted and peppered the scallops before searing them for about 7 minutes. As I started the scallops, the water for the crabs was boiling, so I threw in about a tablespoon of Old Bay and then followed with the crab legs.

Everything times out very nicely, and we wound up with a feast like we've never had. Every bit of the seafood turned out perfectly, sweet and succulent and delicious. The scampi was incredible: the shrimp were lightly sweet and nicely garlicky. The large sea scallops were simple, yet perfectly sweet and moist. They practically melted on the tongue. And the crab - the crab was amazing. I haven't had crab like that in years.

All in all...one of the best meals of my life! I loves me some Grand Lux, but this meal beat anything we could have done there by a mile.