Charlie Trotter's in the wayback machine

I graduated culinary school in May of 2004 and my reward for this was to visit Charlie Trotter's world famous eponymous restaurant for dinner, at the time the restaurant was #32 on the list of the top 50 restaurants in the world and considered one of if not the best restaurant in Chicago.  We had made reservations for 4 people on June 1st and three of us arrived a few minutes early.  While we were waiting for our fourth the hostess came up and informed us that the party who had reserved the kitchen table had cancelled and if we would like to enjoy our dinner there instead of the dining room.  The kitchen table usually required a minimum of 6 guests so we jumped at the chance.  I need to dig around and find the menus, but I believe it was 18 or 19 courses and the meal was absolutely amazing.  Everything from the plating to the service to the courses themselves were flawless.  As a recent graduate I was most interested in watching how the kitchen at one of the worlds best restaurants operates, so didn't take many pictures.  In fact, I only managed to get one photo of a plated course.  I wish I could go back and kick myself, but there ya go!

That was almost 9 years ago, so why am I bringing it up now?  Charlie Trotter closed his restaurant last August after 25 years, back in December they started to auction off the furnishings, fixtures and equipment from the restaurant but that auction was cut a bit short for various reasons.  So last week they finished selling off most of the remaining lots of items via an on-line auction.  As a food nerd I couldn't stay away.  When the auction was over and the dust had settled I was the high bidder on three lots.  One was some square bowls along with a bread plate and saucer.  The second lot included 5 art glass and 2 pottery vases.  The final lot was the one I was really after, it was seven large white porcelain rectangular serving dishes marked "Ola".  Besides sharing the name of my recently deceased grandmother, these dishes are the same pattern as the one shown in the photo above.  Probably not the actual same dishes, but you never know!  I was able to find the plates online and they are quite expensive, the only retail price I could find had them for $140 each.  That seems a little high to me but in any case I got an extremely great deal!  Next thing I want to do is find the menu from our dinner in 2004 and see if I can recreate the course shown in the photo at home!