Friday Night Meal Out

On Friday, Liam and I went for a rare meal out. I'm not sure how it happened really, but we somehow ended up with an agreement from Liam's Mum to babysit, but no real plans of where we going!

Luckily when we wandered into town, the restaurant we fancied had one table for two left. This restaurant can be a bit hit-and-miss as, since the new owners have taken it over, they only offer one vegetarian option on the menu. Last time we went it was a creamy pastry concoction which was a bit too rich, but we looked at the menu in the window before going in on Friday and were pleased to see that the menu had changed.

We decided to skip starters to make sure we had room for dessert, but did enjoy the bread and olives that were brought to the table. Well, I don't like olives so left them for Liam, but the sundried tomato bread roll was yummy.

For my main, I had a grilled vegetable stack with goats cheese. As it was the only option on the menu for me, I didn't think to ask what the vegetables were. My heart sank a little when I saw it consisted of mainly tomatoes and aubergine - neither of which I'm keen on. I left the tomato slices but luckily the aubergine was pretty good - I think it is the texture I normally don't like, but this wasn't at all mushy.

This also came with a nice salad which was a tasty way to end the course...

I was quite full after this, so for dessert I tried to persuade Liam to share the trio of desserts with me (mini versions of all the desserts on the menu). He, however, had his heart set on a full-sized version of the chocolate tarte...

I, therefore, also "had" to order a full-sized dessert - lemon mousse in my case:

This was delicious - the mousse was really tangy and citrussy, which complemented the sweet shortbread perfectly.

We had planned to go out for cocktails after dinner, but we were both so full after our food that we went home instead - we were home by 9.30pm!

It was still nice to get out for a few hours though, and we enjoyed catching up and eating nice food without the cooking/washing up that is usually involved.

What are your favourite things to do on a night out? Meal/drinks/cinema etc? I think next time we will try to go to the cinema. The only problem is that the nearest decent cinema (ie more than one screen and shows films quicker than several weeks after they come out!) is about half an hour drive away so finding a film that fits in between our babysitting times (our parents don't usually arrive til about 7pm and like to be home in bed by 10pm!) is quite tricky. The big tub of Ben & Jerry's with hot caramel sauce in it does, in Liam's mind at least, make the effort worth it though!!