L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

I will NOT go out on Valentine’s Day

February 15, 2009 on 9:44 am | | In General Musing

I will NOT go out on Valentine’s Day
I will NOT go out on Valentine’s Day
I will NOT go out on Valentine’s Day

Only 97 to go.

Why did I even want to? I guess it’s part of the idealistic romantic dream, but for some reason restaurants don’t seem to be able to deliver on it. I hesitate to name this particular restaurant because I’ve had perfectly lovely meals there and don’t wish them ill. They are certainly not the only establishment to stumble in executing the quadruple axel that Valentine’s Day dinner seems to be. How is it different from any other busy night? Perhaps someone can enlighten me.

You’d think I’d learn.

But I had the dress. Low cut, very short, clingy, purple. I had the shoes. High, black, shiny. I won’t go into undergarments or their lack. I was buying into the fantasy.

The restaurant is tiny, lavishly and romantically decorated, dimly lit, couples lingering at every table, though there aren’t more than a dozen tables in the main room. Our table, however is in a little side coventry with lighting suitable for major surgery and some kind of force field at the door that erases the minds of servers each time they pass through it. They wander aimlessly with bowls of soup and bread as if unsure of how they were transported to this alien planet.

We had reservations for the second seating at seven. Which should tell you something about the wild Redmond night life. The first seating was at FIVE. Who can eat at five? The dinner was prix fixe, so there was nothing to do other than to select one of four entrees and wait. If waiting were an Olympic sport, the judges would have dinged us many points for fidgeting. Unless fidgeting were also an Olympic sport.

I have no problem with leisurely dining. I don’t want to be rushed through the soup on a romantic night. But there are different qualities of waiting. A leisurely meal should have a pace and flow to it. Not long periods of suspended animation punctuated by sudden discovery by passing waitstaff wondering how on earth people suddenly showed up at a table they could have sworn was empty.

Water is served in white wine glasses. Cold, lemon-infused. Lovely. Sometime later, forks, knives and spoon arrive to grace the heart-shaped paper doilies. Water glasses arrive with apologies for serving water in wine glasses, but the water-polluted wine glasses are left, as if to be shamed by proper water glasses. Rolls and butter waft in, though without plates. Eventually a very tasty but cool cream of asparagus soup appears and we can balance our rolls on the edges of the soup plate. There’s been no chance to order wine and won’t be for hours yet when we lay a snare for an unlucky waiter who wanders too close.

The salad, which the menu card promised would be arugula, had several recognizable leaves of the stuff on top of shredded ICEBERG with brown edges. Iceberg. Let me say it again. Iceberg. I ate the two pear slices and entertained myself with a short game of find the raisins.

Wine was finally procured from a passing caravan.

Mike had the beef tenderloin which he pronounced excellent and cooked just right. I had the stuffed shiitake mushroom which might also have been excellent had it not passed through the path of the bernaise volcano in the kitchen.

Dessert was excellent, deeply chocolaty and served with champagne flutes though the promised contents, a bubbly Blanc de blanc did not arrive until long after our plates were scraped clean of chocolate atoms. Coffee did not seem to be an option.

A mere three hours after being sucked into the Valentine’s dinner vortex, we made our escape into the night, poorer but wiser.

Next year, we dine at home.

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