happy valentine’s day!

mr. happy stuff and i are both busy this evening, so we decided to have our valentine’s day date at lunch since i have the day off. we chose to use a gift certificate a friend had given us a few months ago and so we were able to have a “fancy” lunch downtown. the gift certificate was good for several different restaurants, so i suggested we try one we hadn’t been to before that happened to be a seafood place. mr. h-s happens to like seafood while i am not so crazy about it. i have, in my adulthood found a few varieties of fish that i enjoy eating, but i still shudder at the texture of crustaceans and the thought of having to crack their exoskeletons in order to extract meat gives me the heebie-jeebies. so, my man was surprised that i suggested seafood, but i was confident i’d be able to find something i’d enjoy.

on the way into the restaurant, we were walking downtown among the government buildings where lots of people in serious businesswear were walking around. i enjoyed seeing one woman dressed all in a classy black outfit whose socks were peeking out just slightly and i could see that they were black–with red hearts on them! :) there was also a man in the restaurant who had a business suit and a tie with “conversation hearts” all over them.

i waivered between ordering a scrumptious sounding grilled chicken and guacamole sandwich and grilled ahi tuna tacos, but decided to pull out the old rule of thumb of ordering something i would never think of making at home, so the tacos won out. i had requested that they cook the tuna a little more well than the “rare” listed on the menu, but i still confused the tuna chunks and the pieces of tomato (at least, i think there were some pieces of tomato…), but it wasn’t as gagging as i’d thought “raw fish” would taste. if i didn’t think, “i’m eating raw fish” it was actually pretty tasty! (nonetheless, it was a bit distracting) the “tacos” were fashioned into cone-shapes rather than the traditional “taco” shape and the tuna was accompanied by a rather spicy pineapple mango salsa that was so juicy that each bite i took created a little fountain of juice from the opposite side of the taco. i just decided to think of it as “dressing” for the pile of greens that were served with the tacos. oh, i almost forgot my favorite part! since we had a gift certificate to spend, we got salads to start the meal. mr. h-s got a caesar salad (boring. even he admitted that while it was good, it was… a caesar salad.) and i got the house salad which was field greens, chevre, finely chopped candied brazil nuts and vidalia onion with a blueberry vinagrette. oh man. that was really, really tasty. it was a last minute addition to our order, but probably my favorite part of the meal. i ate every speck and if i didn’t think anyone would care, i probably would have licked the bowl. i wonder if they sell that dressing….

we ended the meal by splitting a chocolate dessert. the name is escaping me now. what’s it called when they make little chocolate cakes and the middles are all sunken in and filled with liquid chocolate goodness? yeah. that was tasty too. sigh. what a nice valentine’s day treat. and since it was lunch, there wasn’t a crowd and nobody tried to sell us roses or a serenade. plus, our gift certificate went a lot further and… i just checked out their dinner menu online and i think we had better choices at lunch. in case you’re curious, mr. h-s had a brown-sugar glazed salmon with dijon mashed potatoes. i tried a bite. that was yummy too.

note:  the restaurant reviewed here is ocean grill