This weekend I returned to Wayfare Tavern for a wonderful dinner with Corey, our friend Chava and my sister-in-law, Michelle. Unlike my previous visit, I didn’t share an intimate moment with Tyler Florence – but the food was almost as delicious as the chef himself, and that’s really what matters, right?

Our dining companions are both vegetarians, so they shared two meat-free options from the Wayfare menu. The one featured at the top of this post was almost too beautiful to eat…but somehow, they found a way. Homemade ravioli stuffed with ricotta cheese and surrounded by a roasted summer squash puree, jack cheese and crispy “blossoms,” which we assumed were squash blossoms. Aren’t the colors fantastic?

Alongside their pasta, Chava and Michelle shared this tomato salad with heirloom tomatoes, black-eyed peas, feta cheese and a delectable aioli. I had a bit of salad envy when I saw this combination.

Corey and I took a decidedly non-vegetarian route, agreeing to share two meaty entrees that caught my eye the last time I dined at Wayfare Tavern. First up: this smoked pork chop, adorned with a grilled peach (yum) and marcona almond butter (double yum). The combination sounded so intriguing, I had to try it. The peach was a perfect complement to the juicy pork, and the almond butter was so unexpectedly good. The pretty stuff on top is shaved fennel, which doesn’t really do anything for me. But the brown stuff on the bottom is some sort of honey/brown sugar glaze, which does quite a bit for me.

Our second entree was the reason I specifically booked a table on a Sunday evening. Sunday’s blue plate special is chicken pot pie filled with yummy vegetables and encased in a wonderful buttermilk crust. I almost changed my mind about this dish when the woman seated next to us started babbling about it being too dry and too heavy on the tarragon…but Corey convinced me we should try it and form our own opinion.

And that opinion is that it is both delicious and beautiful. Love the pea pod served on top.

The filling was not overly seasoned, as our neighbor implied. It was delicious, as was the crust.

Dessert seemed necessary since our tablemates ordered such light entrees. I mean, we pretty much had to get a few desserts to share…right?

You may remember the pineapple upside down cake from my previous visit.

I let Chava and Michelle enjoy that one so I could try a few bites of banana pudding (which was good, but not nearly Southern enough for my tastes – only one vanilla wafer, Tyler?! really?!).

And then…this appeared in front of me.

It was simply described as peach pie with vanilla goat’s milk ice cream and rosemary sugar. I was expecting a nice piece of pie for the four of us to share. Instead, we had enough pie for four or more to share. Can we talk about how beautiful this rosemary sugar looks? I love rosemary, but admit it can be a bit harsh. Rolling it in sugar certainly makes it more palatable.

Once we broke into this bad boy, it was all over. Oh. Em. Gee. Perfect filling. Perfect (and I do mean perfect) pie crust. I could not ask for a more delicious dessert.

Pie for dinner and pie for dessert. It really doesn’t get any better than that. Well, unless those pies are hand-delivered by Tyler Florence himself. Can someone make that happen?

My mom’s chicken potpie is the stuff of dreams. She takes chicken and veggies, coats them with a layer of gravy, and tops the whole shebang with homemade pie crust. The crust is the key ingredient, but it also makes it a rather labor intensive dish. I could take the easy way out and use store bought crust, but there’s something extra delicious about making a potpie from scratch.

Enter Mark Bittman. His Bitten and Minimalist columns offer a reliable stream of easy, delicious recipes that seem to provide perfect solutions for all of my culinary conundrums. In a recent column, Bittman agreed with my assessment that traditional crust-topped potpies are delicious, but a little too time consuming for most home cooks. His solution is a quick stovetop filling topped with a simple biscuit dough. It’s still made from scratch – no Bisquick here! – and tastes almost as good as my mom’s pie crust version. The biscuit dough has enough butter to make it rich and flaky, but it’s not overpowering or greasy. Buttermilk adds some additional tenderness and flavor. It bakes to a nice golden brown and adds a nice crunch on top of the filling, which includes diced chicken, leeks, carrots, mushrooms and peas. (I added celery, too, because it just seems necessary to me.)

This was ridiculously easy to prepare, yet tasted like something I’d order in a restaurant. You can vary the fillings – swap white meat for dark, or leave it out altogether and make it a veggie potpie. Except for the addition of celery, I didn’t alter the recipe one bit. Head on over to Bittman’s blog to check it out. Let’s just hope Mom doesn’t read this and see how easy it is…I’m expecting her fully loaded pie crust version when I visit her in May!