Date Nights

A couple of weeks ago TLOML and I dined at a fancy London restaurant, courtesy of our favourite New Yorker. As a wedding gift she picked up the tab for a meal for the two of us at Sketch, which is a lovely, artsy fartsy, fancy pants restaurant in Mayfair. TLOML scrubbed up nicely and I smuggled my bump in under a tzjuzzy dress.

 

Sketch was wall to wall fun. We had a a cocktail before dinner (non-alcoholic for me, I was saving that week's booze voucher up for a glass of wine with my meal), in their cool woodland themed bar. Dinner was delicious, fiddly, fancy food, perfectly cooked. (The foie gras burger rapidly made it into my top three burgers of all time.) And the service was impeccable.

The funny thing about it was it gave me a pang for New York. The whole experience - getting dressed up, enjoying attentive service and posh food - it was just so, so, Manhattan.

It made us reflect that, since we returned to London, we don't get out that much. I mean we still eat out - but not often far from home, and rarely upscale. We know our local curry house, neighbourhood Italian, and the handful of nearby excellent gastropubs pretty well, and it's not unheard of for us to grab noodles in the West End, but fancy diners we are not.

All things considered, I rather prefer our comfortable, local, London life. But our posh date night made me resolve to get out and about a bit more.

So last weekend, we went all the way to Camden (2 miles down the road) for Thai food. Okay, it wasn't exactly a posh dinner at a Manhattan hotspot. But I did at least put a bit of lipgloss and heels on for the occasion.

Thanks are due then, to our dear friend, for not only the generous gift, but injecting a little glamour into our date nights for the future.