Azul - West Hartford, CT

Our trip to Block Island today was detoured this morning by a broken garage door spring. Actually, the spring broke last night when E was out. It made a terribly scary "metal noise" (as I described it to my sister). However, I wasn't able to figure out the source of the noise until this morning.

So, we called a repair company and got the door fixed. Unsure what to do with the remaining part of our day, I suggested we head to Azul in West Hartford, CT for lunch.

Azul describes itself as "Nuevo Latino Cuisine". We only saw a bit of its decor since we asked to be seated on the patio to take advantage of the beautiful weather. The patio had quite a bit of seating - some covered and not - with metal chairs and tables and beautiful plants all around.

After a glance at the menu, we quickly honed in on what we wanted. E ordered a chargrilled hamburger - ground beef mixed with chorizo sausage, grilled and topped with pickled onions and tomatoes served with julienne fries. It also came with lime garlic aioli which our server offered to put on the side.

E declared the burger to be good, but he was actually more impressed with the roll it was served on - it had a bit of a sweet taste and was very soft.

I ordered a fire roasted vegetable salad - balsamic mojo marinated vegetables with baby greens, cornbread croutons and shaved smoked Gouda cheese - topped with grilled flank steak. It was amazingly good. The meat was cooked just right, and the vegetables were roasted to perfection.

The meal was accompanied by Azul's bread - four very small cheddar/green olive rolls with an olive oil dipping sauce with herbs. They were wonderful, and our server graciously brought us more.

After eating, we took a "required" - according to our server - look at the dessert menu. A banana crème brûlée and chocolate lava cake stood out, but we turned them down since we were satisfied with our lunch and didn't want to overdo it.