Start your Valentine's Day off right by eating brunch at La Duni Latin Kitchen & Baking Studio on Oak Lawn--but make sure your meal includes a piece of cake. Like one of the walls in La Duni reads: "a day without cake is a day without love."
Since we knew we'd be going to Lovers Pizza for dinner on Valentine's Day, my date and I tried out La Duni for lunch before the holiday.
We arrived at La Duni around 1 p.m. on a Saturday and got a table without a wait. Right away, we ordered a 750 ml. jug of fresh-pressed orange juice, despite its $15 price tag. Trying to stave off colds, both of us needed a vitamin C jolt (not exactly romantic, I know). As the restaurant filled up, our service started to dwindle. Our server didn't come back to take our order for quite awhile. When he did, I quickly ordered the Migas Cuatro Quesos and my dated ordered the BLTA Pop Over.
We finished the orange juice before our meals made it to the table. And my date downed four glasses of ice tea as well. He took the cold remedy mantra "liquids, lots of liquids" very seriously (not exactly romantic, I know).
My date made the better choice with his home baked pop over, stacked with avocado mash, bacon, vine ripe tomato and lettuce for $7.50. I should have known better than to order something so heavy as the migas, considering WHAT I REALLY CRAVED WAS a piece of one of La Duni's fabulous cakes. I made it halfway through the two tortillas and the two scrambled eggs mixed with bacon, cheddar, provolone and Gruyere cheeses, tortilla chips and then more cheese--Queso Fresco--before I surrendered.
We again had to wait awhile for our server to come back to check on us after we finished our entrees. That wait time actually proved valuable because it gave us some time to digest before dessert.
I could have eaten the entire piece of cuatro leches cake and should have ordered it for my lunch entrée. But we threw caution to the wind and decided to share the piece of cake. Two forks, one plate. That's right, we dared the seasonal gods of cold and flu to strike us down right then and there. What the hell; we needed that bit of devil-may-care to spice up our early bird Valentine's Day, and yes, it was worth the risk.
