I love being able to look forward to a nice dinner out.
My son and I worked on his car all day and it was quality time well spent.
Now my wife, he and I are heading to dinner.
Going to wear my new grey cashmere sweater and camel dinner jacket. My favourite pair of shoes as well.
Having a pre-party drink to get the evening started and it’s already warming my soul. Already decided what I’m ordering as my entree at the Italian restaurant. Only thing left to whim are starters and choice of wine.
Don’t have many routine rituals for going out to dinner, except one. For years, my Mom and I have gone out to a casual-dining diner about every weekend or so.
Instead of going dutch, we dug out a country library card from our trip to England back in 2008. Whoever has the card gets to eat for free, and hands over the card in exchange.
“Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t care, where do you want to do?”
“It doesn’t matter to me, you pick.”
“No, you pick.”
“I’ll go wherever you want to go.”
We don’t have a dinner routine but every Sunday we head to the same diner for breakfast and usually sit in the same booth. They have my son’s ham, egg & cheese scramble started around the time we walk in the front door. My wife always gets the same thing as well but I screw things up by actually picking different dishes each time.
We eat out two or three dinners a week, tending to go to local places.
Saturday night we went to a little Italian place run by a sweet, older, Italian woman. She doesn’t have a liquor license, so it is BYOB (she also doesn’t have a corkscrew, so it’s BYOCS as well).
We always offer her a glass of whatever wine we brought. She always demurs initially. I always say, “I really think you’d enjoy this wine” or something to that effect. She always says, “oh, alright, but just a little”. She then pours herself a nice glassful, drinks it down, compliments the wine, and thanks us.
We usually bring two bottles, knowing that she pours herself a very nice helping and will have a second glass when offered.