the boiler room

On Sunday my good friend offered to watch the kids on Monday so that Steve and I could go on a date. It's weird because we've probably actually gone on more dates in the last few months than we ever have in a "few months" timespan before. But when you need to schedule something in order to get your time together, dates seem to be a good way to make sure he gets his buns home. :)

on Saturday (a few days before) Steve parents took us out to Spaghetti Works. Of course we had to walk a few blocks to get there, but we happened to walk past a restaurant that looked really cool inside called The Boiler Room. I even pointed out the beautiful huge flower painting on the wall to Brielle. We decided that some day we were going on a date there. We just didn't know that it would be a couple days later.

SO, Steve put in a reservation earlier in the day, and let me know that it was a "smart casual" dress code. whatevertheheck that means. so I wore my goodwill outfit (that's SMART and CASUAL, right?).

When we got there they took our coats to hang on the little coat rack. spiffy. and then they sat us as a nice little table, and the waiter was REALLY good. a young, twenty-something, well groomed, very polite young man.

He handed us our menus.

I broke a sweat.

Here's the deal: remember THIS post I wrote way back when? I have a "sensitive" pallet and I'm not used to weird foods. (for the record, I DO get a little grossed out about that blog post since I try to eat a bit better these days. but in my heart of hearts, I do still love a corndog and mac and cheese.)

Ok, and it also happened to be a Monday. I've been wanting to start "meatless Mondays" thanks to some good friends who have been living or trying the vegetarian lifestyle. So my lunch was meatless, and my supper was going to be meatless too. til I saw the menu.

For a few minutes I had a master plan in my head. it went something like this: okay...he hasn't even poured our water yet, so if we get up and leave, it won't be THAT bad. oh, but crap, they have our coats. so we'd have to stop there and get our coats and explain that we didn't check out the menu before we arrived, and we were going to applebees or the cheesecake factory or somewhere plain-old-boring-and-not-rich people eat instead. and yes, it would be REALLY embarrassing, but we'd never see these people again, EVER, so who cares.

But then he came and poured our water. so we were stuck.

so instead I make my husband feel TERRIBLE by repeating over and over, "honey, I just don't know what I'm going to order. What am I going to eat? I don't even know what this stuff is, and I don't know what I"m going to order." I had about 5 options for a main dish. a few fish options (no thanks. i don't even like tuna.), PORK chops (no thanks. I don't do pig very well. not even bacon. especially when right next to the beautiful flower painting I saw through the window is a HHHHHHHUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEE painting of a PIG, eyes gouged out, all roasted and ready to eat or something. huge. like, I'm thinking six feet by six feet at least.), or steak. OH, or lamb. And I did actually really like the lamb tapas we got at Espana for my birthday, but i don't know...it seemed to risky. So I settled on steak. I don't think I'd had a steak since our honeymoon when I ordered steak at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Factory. (see? no fish for me.) So I thought, well, even though it's far from meatless, at least I know I'll like the cauliflower and mushrooms that come with it. And at least I know what cauliflower and mushrooms ARE, unlike the rest of the stuff that came with the other food.

and steve decides on the steak too.

so we order, and the guy tells us we should order two different things since it's our first time. So steve actually considers it! I was like, NOPE, I'm not going to share anything with you. I'm eating my steak. And Steve bought in and order PIG. I mean pork chops. He must have turned his head away from the roasted pig mural with every bite or something. I tried ONE bite and, well, I'm not going to talk about that bite. And then I tried another bite that Steve prepared just for me, with not as much pigness, but it still just wasn't good.

but my STEAK, on the other hand, was GREAT. I had a slight panic attack when I was eating the olives (our appetizer that we got to pretend we were back in Spain, which didn't work, by the way) and I realized that I never told the guy I wanted my steak WELL DONE. So Steve says, "well, if it's too red, ask them to put it back on for you." and when it came, it was red. bleeding. mooing. but I decided to be a big girl and eat it anyway. I didn't want to eat THAT much meat on my meatless monday anyway, so I gave steve the middle two slices, and I ate the outer two slices, which were at least brown on the outsides and the bottom, so that was better. And it was actually really really really good. I just had to eat it red side down. but it was REALLY good.

But man, when you pay that much for a plate of food, plus a glass of wine and a cup of coffee for my hubby (because my "12-year-old-pallet" doesn't like alcohol OR coffee either) it really adds up. we NEVER spend that much on a meal. except once, for my birthday, at Espana, which was TOTALLY WORTH EVERY SINGLE PENNY. so anyway, I was kinda freaking out about how much we just paid, even though I knew we'd still be okay for groceries and bills and all that. so we passed on dessert. (ooh, but now that I think about it, we should have just looked at the menu to see what the heck kind of stuff they offered.)

and instead, we came home to our modest little home with our non-sleeping children in their beds, just in time to eat a bowl of cereal for dessert and watch a Castle re-run. because THAT'S how we roll.

**I married a wonderfully sensitive man, so Steve, if you're reading this, please know that I had a wonderful time out with you. I even liked the food. I don't want this post to make you feel guilty for taking me out to a restaurant with really weird food. it was good for me to be a grown up. but next time, I pick Chipotle. :)