A Friend's 18th Birthday at Dolce Osteria

A personal blog post about a recent trip to Dolce Osteria and a friend's 18th birthday!

The 18th birthday, a huge milestone for all teenagers, and a day that all kids dream of. I remember thinking to myself when I was 10 that it would be a day full of presents, laughter, friends, and family; what more could I ask for? However, as you get older and get closer to the day, at least for me, the feelings change. It gets scarier, too close for comfort, and it becomes a culmination of the fears of your future. Questions like: What am I going to do after high school? What about my friends and my family? How will I keep in contact? How am I going to leave? This line of thinking has definitely been part of the beginning of senior year, and it was a sign for me to work through these fears. After all, you can't live life worrying about what your tomorrow or future will be like. It's about living in the present. It's about savoring those little moments, especially the ones, in this case, when you're sharing meals with the people you love, the friends that you care about.

After much deliberation, one of my best friends decided to have her 18th birthday at Dolce Osteria, a long-standing Italian restaurant that funnily enough I had history with. Growing up, my parents owned Zen Asian Fusion, where I worked at for around two years. In the same shopping center, there was Dolce Osteria. My parents had made friends with the owners, but eventually after Zen was sold, I hadn't had the chance to dine there again. This birthday dinner was ironically a reminder of the past, while also representing the future in store for all of us.

We ended up ordering four different pasta dishes, along with the calamari as an appetizer. In the top left corner, was my Bolognese. Right next to it is the Sorrento. The bottom pictures (from left to right) are Linguine Alla Genovese and the Penne Alla Vodka. While dining on these delicious pastas, I couldn't help but notice the warm, comforting atmosphere around us. Tables were filled with couples smiling over shared pastas, families chattering away over garlic bread, and us, at the center of the dining table, celebrating a birthday that marked a significant change in our lives. The pasta was homey and tasted like the memories of my childhood where my sister and I would walk over to Dolce as our parents worked, ordering takeout of the classic spaghetti. It was in these moments of family and friends that food was somehow the glue tying us all together, sharing laughter and pasta all in one second of time.

For dessert, we had their chocolate mousse cake and pistachio gelato. It was the perfect finish for our dinner together, a sweet and lasting memory to end the night. While we all walked out of the restaurant and shared our bittersweet goodbyes, my friend ended up saying something that stuck with me: how it was all the beginning. Even though it felt like our 18th birthday was an ending to our childhood, high school, and being a teenager, it was really the start of something special. It was the start to the rest of our lives, and it didn't mean that we have to let go of our past memories to enjoy it. Food was how we were able to make new memories, while simultaneously serving as a reminder of our past happiness and joys with loved ones.

Learning all of these life lessons made for a particularly sentimental blog this week, but I felt like this was an important one to share to fellow foodies. As a teenager in an ever-changing and evolving world, it's so valuable to cherish the people you love and, yes, the food you love as well. Happy eating and please enjoy a meal with your friends and family, a reminder from me to you about all of the happiness there is to be explored!

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