Nobody Puts Baby In The Corner!!

For Valentine's Day Stacey made plans to go out on Friday night, hoping to avoid some of the holiday's chaos. He arranged for the boys to spend the night at his parents and made a reservation at a surprise location (I love surprises!). The day of the boys were at the Smith's, I brought home champagne, he brought home flowers, we were rockin' and rollin' and ready for a great date. We got in the car and drove to our destination which turned out to be Del Frisco's a highly praised steak house that neither of us had ever been to - Who Hoo, a fancy dinner with my main man, I couldn't be happier. Apparently he had received a gift card for his birthday which he had also kept a secret - nice job babe!!  The parking lot was packed, but we finally found a spot and after wrestling my way out from some bushes we were on our way. The place was already wall to wall waiting, so much for beating the crowd, but we had a reservation so after a few minutes of waiting we were seated. That is where things took a turn. 

To say we were in the kitchen would be a bit of an exaggeration, but not too far off from the truth - and not like the behind the scenes VIP table a PF Chang's - but more like me and the dish towels were getting to know each other. We were also intimately close to the couple sitting at the table next to ours. I caught Stacey's eye and could see by his clinched jaw that he was not a happy camper. Speaking of campers there was a special Valentine's menu and Stacey later remarked he felt like he was at Valentine's Camp, which if you know Stacey is not the kind of camp he enjoys attending (apparently we also attended Honeymoon camp, but I won't go into that). But the straw that really broke the camel's (or Stacey's in this senario) back was that every person that walked out of the kitchen, which is pretty much every server, had to walk behind Stacey's chair and because of the tight quarters banged his chair on their way. I could see the steam coming out of his ears and since this wasn't something we get to do just all the time I suggested we leave before the server came and try again another night when things weren't so crazy. I could tell he was relieved. I felt pretty proud of myself for being so chill about leaving the aroma of steak and wine and heading to Pei Wei. Not exactly the night we planned but still a night out with my man. I tried to have the server take a defeated picture of us at Pei Wei but the hubby wasn't feelin' a photo shoot, again not surprising if you know him. 

The silver lining, oh yes there is silver lining, is that last night (see self portrait above, baby steps) we had our do-over and a random Tuesday at Del Frisco's proved to be much more up our ally than, well, Valentine's camp. We were seated at a four top without even the possibility of bumping elbows with the folks next to us. Everything from the salad and bread to the crabcakes to the filet trio (which I also wanted to take a picture of, but didn't) and creamed corn all the way to the Del's Delight was wonderful!! We had a fantastic dinner and have no regrets about our vanishing act a few weeks ago. Next Valentine's Day I think we'll be ordering in. :)