not on Valentine's

B and I long ago learned not to have our Valentine's Day dinner out on Valentine's Day. That was Tuesday. We ate out on Wednesday instead.

We like Italian, so we tried a newish place that attracted B. for its unusual pizza offerings. She had a pizza with, and I quote from the menu, Mozzarella, Blue Cheese, Walnuts, Asian Pears & Drizzle of Honey. She thought it was delicious, and took half home for lunch the next day. The number of bets I wouldn't eat something like that on is uncountable, but Jack Sprat and all that ...

So I had fish (petrale sole) picatta - I always like picatta - which was quite good but which was dwarfed in size by the vegetables on the plate. These were winter vegetables, so there was a big hunk of sauteed spinach (tasty, but few people know how to wash all the grit out of spinach), cauliflower, carrots, and something like carrots except they were yellow and very hard and didn't taste like carrots.

Bread beforehand wasn't warm but it did have just a slightly burnt edge to the taste of the crust, which I just relish, and the desserts were great (lemon cake with just a hint of chocolate hidden inside the frosting).

Ambience, though? Crowded, noisy, floor and walls that reflected the noise instead of absorbing it. Service very fast, but a couple odd things. Two successive servers asked if we wanted water, and neither spoke up enough to be heard over the ambient noise. I dropped my napkin; a server picked it up and whisked it away, which is good, but never brought me another one, which is strange.

Good food, and I'm not sorry we went, but: somewhere else next time.