standard date night

more often than not it usually involves Chinese take-out beer or maybe a bottle of wine and watching a bad movie in the living room. And I love it that way!

an evening with Mr Bourdain

the evening started out with potential car difficulties that appear (um fingers crossed folks) to have not come to fruition. Really fingers crossed because this is the better of the two vehicles of course that is not really saying a whole hell of a lot however...C got dropped at the Retro-Moderns abode. Mr Retro-Modern graciously offered his babysitting services for the evening and who are we to say no?! They were joined by Mr Feed the Monkeys for an evening of pizza, ice cream and Wii. David & I were then off to meet part of our group at a local Honduran joint, La Rumba, that David seemed to have produced out of thin air as a dining idea . The company was fantastic, lively & fun, the food was good and I would very much like to go back and sample other menu items but it was the $2 margartias that sold me on the place. We were then off to meet the rest of our group at the Tennessee Theater and enjoy Anthony Bourdain's ruminations on his show, cooking, travel and life in general. He was witty, engaging, and down right personable and I could have kicked myself for not splurging on the meet & greet tickets but they were $140 and not exactly a reasonable expenditure for us at this time. You can of course head over to Retro-Moderns for another synopsis of a lovely evening out on the town

cheeks..not just for pinching anymore

okay who knew that lamb cheeks would be so down right melt in your mouth tasty? Honestly not me but when we heard that was the appetizer du jour last night at Northshore Brasserie we thought WWBD(what would Bourdain do)? We agreed he'll eat anything so we should be adventurous & order them and of course the escargot for David, followed by pork tenderloin & lamb shank then apple crisp & creme brulee. Start to finish the meal was exquisite far better than one would expect of a restaurant in a strip mall despite ringing endorsements by Missy and many many folks on twitter. I am anxious to try the mussels next time as well as try their brunch and quite frankly have already picked that as my birthday dining experience even though we have a few weeks to go on that!

date night

yes D & I managed a night on the town we started with a lovely Italian dinner at Vinny & Me. Had the calamari which in our experience is either done very well or very poorly there is no middle ground with the dish, luckily they do it very well there. I had some wonderful veal marsala and yes I know horrible for the calf but they taste so very yummy, D had a NY strip that melted in your mouth, had a nice bottle of wine it was a good meal sadly neither one of us could manage any tiramisu maybe next time.
We then met up with some friends and went to a local comedy club for a laugh or two and outrageously priced drinks. Managed to get home after midnight without turning into a pumpkin-or falling asleep, it's so sad getting old huh? Didn't things used to get started at midnight? It was so long ago I don't remember anymore...
And while an indulgent evening thanks to a dinning card we have no need to break the bank-dinner had a discount as did the comedy club tickets!