This year we tried something totally new and different for New Year's Eve-we left our house! Mike and I have spent many New Year's Eves together now, as friends, dating, and married. For many years, we hosted a Games Night style party for all of our friends in St. Louis, complete with prizes and a champagne toast. Upon moving to Texas, we made fabulous appetizers, played games, and took time to enjoy our lives as a couple. So this year, we were invited to a New Year's Eve/1st Anniversary Party at Whitestone Brewery and decided to give it a chance. Whitestone Brewery is about 1.5-2 miles from our house and the weather here was delightful, so we walked there to safely enjoy our evening. When we arrived, we were greeted by some of our favorite beer tenders, who exchanged beer for pictures of them.

Next, we headed out to the patio, where most of the action was happening at that point. The patio was host to Jimmy Vega's Smokehouse, a photo booth, live music, and for a bit- a tshirt screening truck. It was close to 7 pm, so we ordered our food and enjoyed our beers and the live music, as we waited for dinner. The music was awesome and even inspired me to pick up a tshirt to commerorate the evening.

It took a while for our food to arrive, but it was definitely worth the wait! We picked two different entrees, with the intent to share the food items. Our first choice was the grilled beef tenderloin over roasted horseradish potatoes with a malt thyme compound butter and green beans. This was delicious! The beef was cooked perfectly and the butter compound set it over the edge. The sides were yummy, too. Everything had so much flavor and blended well together.

Our second entree was mocha marinated smoked pork tenderloin over poblano grits with a porter demi glacé and green beans. This was another great option and may have been my favorite because I love grits! The pork was tender and the marinade was fantastic. The grits were amazing and the poblano gave them just a little bit of a kick. After the amazing meal, we were super full, so we opted to skip dessert. The food was fabulous and we were sad to hear that the menu was a specialty menu. However, we were later told that Whitestone is trying to get them to come back on a a more regular basis. We enjoyed the music for a while and took advantage of the photo booth while it wasn't too crowded.

We ended up missing out on the tshirt truck, as we didn't realize they weren't staying very late. Our disappointment was eased when we ran into some of our trivia and pub club friends who invited us to play some Cards Against Humanity with them. We had so much fun playing games and enjoying the music of the dj, another trivia friend. Our evening ended with dancing to great music, a toast, and a long walk back home. We ended 2016 with a fabulous time and hope that is a good sign of what is to come for 2017. Happy New Year!

The New Austonian