Dining on Valentine’s Day presents a double threat, a couple more volatile than Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor: super-high expectations of the perfect romantic meal mixed with the busiest restaurant night of the year.
To help you avoid a disappointing date, we’ve turned to some dining and dating experts for advice.
Robert Scarola, author of “Make Mine Medium Rare: A Diner’s Survival Guide,” offers the following words of wisdom: Get an online reservation (from a site like opentable.com) because you “can find out which restaurants are booked and at what specific times … and you don’t have to get frustrated on the phone trying to find a place.” Plus, the service “can forward memos to the restaurant with special requests” involving a wedding proposal, flowers or champagne to be waiting at the table and all cost arrangements.
“These sort of pre-arranged little special events always get the servers on your side … they love to see people have a good time, ” Scarola says.
He further recommends letting the waiter know that you understand how “busy a night it is so you can be their understanding commiserating customer right off the bat. … The service will be good because you care about them and what they face on this night of dining madness.”
So now that we have the dinner part straight, here’s advice we mined about the date part:
Author and dining/dating expert Shawna Schuh on getromantic.com warns ladies on dinner dates: Don’t be picky when ordering; it can be a turnoff. Don’t leave lipstick stains on your napkin. Don’t eat messy finger foods.
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For the person on the other side of the table, we turned to getgirls.com, where Don Diebel (“Americas #1 Singles Expert”) says to guys: Do make reservations. Do order for your date in a “classy place.” Don’t scarf your food, slurp your soup or pick “food out of your mouth with your fingers” at the table. And don’t use a calculator to tabulate the tip.
Finding Nemo–at a restaurant
For those of us who have left the world of dinner dates behind for kid-focused dining, I have a great tip–especially if your kids saw “Finding Nemo.” On a recent visit to the Tank Noodle (4953 N. Broadway; 773-878-2253), I delighted in the fab Vietnamese fare while my 1-year-old daughter was entranced by their fish tank, brilliantly stocked with two clownfish (a big and little one, a.k.a. Nemo and Marlin), a Regal Tang fish (a.k.a. Dory) and a big Moorish idol (a.k.a. Gill voiced by Willem Dafoe).