Regal Eating

I decided I was in charge of Valentine's Day plans this year, even though Tim did an outstanding job last year. I went to OpenTable, which had a specially designed website for all of your VDay needs, including reservations, naturally. I chose Monarch in Maplewood after hearing positive reviews from coworkers.

Our last upscale dining experience was an utter disaster (see last post) so I had my fingers crossed and lowered my expectations. The latest time available was 5:45, so I was pleasantly surprised when the average age of the diners at this time wasn't much older than us. I was also glad I went with the skirt option and Tim, some chinos as everyone here was dressed to the nines, I'm guessing because of the holiday.

We started off with a charcuterie and cheese platter, which wasn't necessarily self-explanable on the menu. Apparently, the waitress thought the same thing and had to carry a cheat sheet to make sure she described everything correctly. Even though we had just had homemade Bleu Cheese burgers the night before, Tim was all over that option; I saw sheep's milk and thought, "Yes." For the meats, we had some sort of hard pork salami and a huge chunk of country pate, which had venison in it-good.

For the entrees, we both went fish: Tim the flounder and me the skate. Each fish came with some interesting side options. Mine had these pistachio and horseradish sunchokes-wow! and Tim had deep-fried chickpeas. By this time, Tim's hangover had taken over and I flew solo with my dessert: a dark chocolate souffle! Ok I'm stuffed now.

The wine list was very easy to navigate and had options at every pricepoint. The service is outstanding with a separate breadserver, handing out individual garlicky slices, as well as a water girl who kept her left hand behind her back at all times-fancy! The atmosphere is really cool with hundreds of paper-mache butterflies hanging from the ceiling. Finally we found a restaurant that deserves a repeat.

http://monarch.tophatandmonocle.net/