As I told you all in my last post, my husband is great at the "romantic surprise." A friend recently said that L "sets the bar" for husbands everywhere. Well, it's true, but let's keep that our little secret. We don't want it to go to his head.
I was cursed with being born on New Year's Eve. As a child, my birthday was never celebrated on the actual date. My parents wanted to go out that night. As an adult, it masquerades as a fun birthday, what with the whole world celebrating and all, but truthfully it's always a letdown. For everyone else, you screw up New Year's Eve, and you still have your birthday to redeem yourself and salvage your year. Not for me. It's all or nothing on that one day. And then I made the mistake of marrying someone who works in the restaurant business. Now for the rest of my life, every year on my birthday, my husband will have to work.
But L manages to make it special nonetheless. For example, this year. First, he totally faked me out by telling me for weeks in advance that our plans were to celebrate on Saturday January 2; and then at 5:30 pm on Friday January 1, he announced, that I better get dressed and "pack a bag!"
The surprise was cool. But what was in store was even cooler. He took me to BLT Steak, a New York transplant located in the ultra-swank W downtown. I had heard it was good, but it really exceeded my expectations. Certainly, this was partly due to the company. Our closest friends (the always entertaining Brad and the incomparable Arthur & Zhenya) joined us and we had a blast.
The room was beautiful, the service: excellent, and the food was amazing. Before we ordered anything, they brought us pate which was velvet-y deliciousness smeared on bread, pickled vegetables and charcuterie. And we hadn't even ordered anything. It was all amazing. Then we ordered appetizers, including roasted beets, a new favorite of mine, and snow crab. We were all panting for more. The server advised us to "save room for the bread." And I thought "I'm not going to eat the bread!" But then they brought it out. A giant platter of just-out-of-the-oven popovers. I couldn't resist. And I'm glad I didn't. These were truly amazing. Delicious, light, airy, warm, with melted cheese on top and melting butter inside. If the meal had ended there, I still would have given it 5 stars. The bread was awesome.
For the sake of all of our waistlines, it probably should have ended there. But alas, still up: our entrees. We ordered more food than we could possibly eat. I had Dover Sole, which was exquisite. There were lamb chops, filet mignon, Alaskan cod, creamed spinach, tomatoes provencal, broccolini. It was an orgy of food, accompanied by champagne (Billicart-Salmon Rose) and red wine. Finally, there was dessert. It was a marathon of eating, drinking, laughing, and celebrating.
We ended the night in a corner suite on the 11th floor overlooking downtown Atlanta. Floor to ceiling windows surrounded us. It was a spectacular night. Thank you, L. All my love.
