Table Mesa's Cheap Dates

We moved to Nashville from Northwest Arkansas.  Arkansas, yawn, who wants to be there.  Well apparently everybody!  Folks are moving in from all over the country to be in the Bentonville area thanks to Walmart and the fabulous Crystal Bridges Museum.  

Right before we moved to Tennessee, a small restaurant named Table Mesa opened on the square in Bentonville.  The owners came from Oregon after researching small towns across the USA.  Boy were we lucky.  Although the owners came from the Pacific Northwest, their heart was in New Mexico.  The cuisine they introduced our sleepy neck-of-the-woods to was amazing.  It is still one of the top restaurants in town.  

I like to take credit for some of their success (very little, but some).  I hosted their very first private event at the restaurant just 3 weeks after it opened.  For most of the 50+ folks in attendance, it was their first time at the restaurant.  The rest, as they say, is history!

One of my favorite items on their menu is an appetizer called "Cheap Dates."  Keith and I would always get an order (along with their amazing queso and fish tacos).   While these may not be the prettiest appetizer on the tray, they are the most delicious!  Enjoy!

Cheap Dates

1 lb bacon, cut in half

1 lb pitted dates

4 oz blue cheese

Preheat oven to 375.  Slice open date and stuff with a pinch of blue cheese.  Squeeze shut and wrap with bacon.  Secure bacon with toothpick and place in baking dish or jellyroll pan.  Bake 30-40 minutes or until bacon is crisp.