Date Night

Friday night. We had talked earlier in the week about going out for a nice meal - dressing up, having a few drinks, a good meal and maybe even some music and dancing. Basically a night out as we hadn't gone out on a "date" in a while. I embraced this with gusto - I dolled myself up Sex and the City style (it's been a while...heh), found a great restaurant and was looking forward to a nice evening.

We went to Casa Mono, a lively Spanish tapas bar on Irving Place run partly by Mario Batali. It was packed, so we put our names down for a spot at the counter (my favourite spot in any restaurant) so we could watch all the action in the kitchen. We headed to a nearby pub (my flashy outfit blended in beautifully with the decor thank you very much), and had a few drinks while we waited for the phone call.

10p.m and the restaurant called to say they were ready to seat us. We downed our beers (no cocktails in the pub, honey), and raced back with anticipation. "Your table's ready for you now". Huh? No, we put our names down for a spot at the counter. "Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you would prefer a table so you wouldn't have to wait any longer". Okaay then. We were really hungry by then so a table it is.

The food was amazing. We shared small plates of sardines, octopus, melt-in-the-mouth skirt steak and mussels with chorizo, all washed down with a delicious Spanish wine. The servings were a decent size, not small as I thought it would be with tapas, so we were stuffed by the time we were finished.

Overall a great meal, though next time I will definitely try to get a spot at the counter. The tables, while having a cute little "drawer" underneath to store unused glasses and cutlery, was a little too small for more than three small plates at a time. We finished up with an espresso and headed out into the hot and sticky night.

Update: I made some minor changes to the original post as I'm no longer fuming ;)