Date Night

Rob decided a few weeks ago that he was going to take me on a real date to go to dinner and to see his favorite play, Arcadia. The GT drama club was putting it on over a series of weekends. So I picked a date and he made the rest of the plans. Pretty sweet deal for me. :)

He picked a Thai food place called Spoon, for dinner. The perk was it was within walking distance of the school. The downside was it was cooler than we anticipated for walking. Oh well. We got there without trouble, although we did see two cars turn down the wrong way of a median. That was exciting.

We got to the restaurant, were seated, and had just ordered appetizers when the power went out. It flickered back on for only a moment and was out again. Thank goodness for candles at the tables! The power was not coming back on (the whole street was out) and we started discussing alternatives in case they could not provide dinner. But the staff jumped into action and were just amazing! They gave us Basil Rolls on the house because they weren't able to readily provide our pot stickers. Then they came around and took our order in the dark and we ended up with a true candle light dinner! They figured out a good enough lighting situation with flashlights in the kitchen to enable them to cook. They brought out all sorts of tea lights and put them around. Right as we were finishing, the power came back on. They kept apologizing for the power outage and we were like, no no, we had a blast. :)

We made it over to the drama theater in time to pick up our tickets. Quite possibly too early, but that's ok. We are always early. When we walked in the door, we were assulted by a slew of greetings from different people around the room. Then the man behind the candy counter says, "Ok, so I am not trying to hit on you, but you get a free concession. I was instructed by a friend to buy the next girl who walked through the door anything they want from the snack bar. He left a dollar for it." It was like being the 100th customer. I took the M&Ms and thanked the mysterious person who purchased my candy and the guy behind the counter. I soon met the person who bought my candy and thanked him as well. He ended up sitting next to us during the play. Very socialable person.

The play itself was very good. I had no idea what it was about, but I enjoyed it. The GT Drama club has very talented actors and actresses in it's midst. The last live show I saw was the opera, but before that was in high school. I really do enjoy it. :) It was a fun story and a lot of laughs. We are looking forward to maybe catching another show before Rob graduates. Hey, for student admission prices, we can afford that!

All in all it was a really fabulous night with a few odd, but fun perks that were totally unexpected. A perfect date for sure!

Pasta Bella

As mentioned previously, I wanted to try and expand where we ate out. Last night we decided would be our first adventure into the unknown. What I hadn't anticipated was how hard it would be to find a place close (this being a key difficulty - in other words, not downtown) AND reasonably priced that neither of us had been to. In this search I realized how many of these places I have gone to for lunch or an after work thing because I don't live far from where I work. Thankfully, we knew who to call who might have suggestions.

Amanda came to our rescue after I had spent an hour on the internets and racked my brain for where to go. One of the places she suggested was Pasta Bella. It's owned by the same people who run the Marietta Diner which I have been to for lunch and enjoyed. Unfortunately this place was not in our realm of close, but we were getting hungry and didn't care at that point.

Overall, this was a pretty positive choice. It's not in our normal routes to anything else, so we probably aren't going to just pop over and grab a bite. Our waiter was friendly, if not a bit weird. The place smelled of garlic which I thought was pretty yummy. We were both pleased we our dishes and had them for lunch again today. Mine will even work for lunch tomorrow.

A key lesson we have learned, plan ahead on where to go. I think next time won't be too bad because we have some suggestions for downtown and will be willing to go there next time. Our next adventure won't be for a few weeks because we are heading to the Outer Banks next weekend. We get to go to our favorites there instead. :)

Can I Take Your Order?

There are a LOT of restaurants in Atlanta. Most of them unknown to me. I have gone to enough of them to have my selection of what I like and what I don't. It's not that I don't like new places, but it's hard to get out and go to them. Most of the time when we go somewhere new, someone else has planed it and we just show up.

New places are always a mixed bag. The phrase, "you win some, you loose some", couldn't be more true. Some of the "wins" have been - One Midtown Kitchen, La Paz, Figo, and Scalini's. Conversely, the losses are - La Parilla, Ru Sans in Five Points, and Copeland's Cheesecake Bistro (such a ripe off of the Cheesecake Factory, I don't know who they think they are kidding). We know they can't all be winners, but it would be nice if they were.

There are also some pretty sweet deals you can get at certain places IF you know about them. For instance, Zucca's has wine for $10 a bottle on Wednesdays. This is referred to as Wine-o Wednesdays. I would love to take advantage of it, especially now, as today is a Wednesday. Bella's Pizzeria has Happy Hours from 5-7 where you get a free slice of pizza for every alcoholic beverage you purchase. There's a tapas place that does $5 margaritas and half price tapas on Monday nights. Not bad! But the reality of it is, I never remember who's deal is when, when I am actually hungry.

I even get cards in the mail every now and then to some of the Buckhead Life Group Restaurants, but they always have restrictions and never seem like a good enough deal.

The goal is to just "get out more" at this point. Of course, I will have experiences to share so you will know where to go should you find yourself in this place they call Atlanta.