This past Saturday night, Traci and I had dinner at Mildred's Big City Food near University and 34th St. to celebrate our one-year wedding anniversary (where does time go?). After mostly being budget
conscious when it 
has come to eating-out since moving to Gainesville, it was nice to splurge a bit.
Mildred's describes its cuisine as "using only local, organic produce, fresh farm products and Florida seafood" with each dish prepared from scratch "honoring the integrity of classic cuisine." The restaurant itself is fairly nondescript from the outside, but nicely done inside. Again, we're big fans of small, affordable, hole-in-the-wall spots, but a nice meal in an upscale setting was a nice change of pace.
We started with an appetizer of crispy chicken livers in a blue cheese hot sauce. Think hot wings and blue cheese only chicken livers instead of wings - an interesting combo. I ordered a Maytag blue cheese salad (I can't pass up blue cheese) with pecans and Traci had an organic field greens salad with a vinaigrette dressing. Both salads were very good. For our main course, Traci had a New York strip on Yukon gold mashed potatoes and I went with veal and corn fritters (the exact name doesn't seem to be up on their site). The veal wasn't bad, but a little tough for my liking. The fritters were delicious. Traci loved her mashed potatoes. There wasn't anything wrong with the steak, but it wasn't outstanding either. For dessert, we couldn't pass up sharing a slice of cheese cake from the case in the front. 
Our server was knowledgeable and did a nice job. Again, for the price, we expected a good meal and that's what we got. Mildred's sister restaurant next door, the New Deal Cafe, offers casual dining. We plan to check out New Deal one of these days and, while Mildred's wasn't perfect, we had a good time.
p.s. If you haven't already, check out my better-half's blog at: www.traciintheswamp.com. This past summer I gave her tips on how to start up her blog and now she's running circles around me!
