So, okay. Valentine’s day is on the hearts and minds of pretty much everyone right now, so I thought I’d give V-day its share of blog time.
Mike and I don’t particularly like Valentine’s Day. It’s not that we don’t enjoy the spirit of the holiday where we can appreciate each other and spend time together, but when it comes to going out on Valentine’s Day, we’ve usually felt a little…ripped off.
Last year, we decided to do something super special. We’re always looking for the best of the best when it comes to restaurants, and we’re the kind of idiots who spend most of our money on the things we consume. Anyway, we thought for Valentine’s day we would go to Morimoto in Philly. Yes, that’s as in Iron Chef Morimoto–he’s on tv, he’s gotta be the best, right?
He looks pretty impressive to me. Plus, his restaurant is one of the top rated places in the city!
It’s seriously cool and hip and you totally feel like a VIP when you go.
But on Valentine’s day, guess what? All of the morons in the world want to feel like VIPs and take their significant others to Morimoto to impress them. That means that “sweetheart” menus are created, that the restaurant is booked solid, that the waiters rush you through your meal and you miss out on the actual experience that Chef Morimoto had in mind when he created the restaurant.
The food was good–we had a 10 course tasting menu, and our bill ended up just shy of $500 after we added in a few drinks. The food was not $500 good. It just wasn’t. We left still feeling hungry and dissatisfied. After 10 courses! We’ve had better meals for much less than that in equally awesome settings. (if you’re interested, Elements Restaurant in Princeton, NJ was one of those places–the 9 course chef’s tasting menu was one of the best meals of our lives.)
Overall, that’s the feeling I get when we go out on Valentine’s day. Everyone else is out too! Everyone else wants a special night out, but what happens is that restaurants mass produce their food in preparation for their overbooked night, things aren’t as fresh or well executed because there are simply too many patrons to serve. And so to get to all of those patrons, the waiters shuffle you in, throw the food at you, and then kick you out so your table can be filled again.
So we’re not going out this Valentine’s day. We’ll celebrate Valentine’s day some other night when we can take it slow and enjoy each others’ company without being crammed in with a million other lovers. We haven’t figured out what we’ll do yet, but I can assure you we won’t be spending $500 bucks again.
Do you like Valentine’s Day? Will you be celebrating on the 14th or some other day?
Mandy Reply:
February 11th, 2011 at 7:37 pm
@Audrey: That’s a good idea to wait until your anniversary–you can still do something special but not have to battle it out with every other soul on earth to get a good reservation! Plus, you can probably snag some awesome “anniversary” candy for a good deal after Valentine’s day!
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