After going to Volt for his birthday, Kirios decided (and I didn’t protest) that he missed taking me out on the town for date nights. Especially since we started living together, we’ve spent a lot of time watching tv/movies together on the couch or hanging out with a group of friends, but neither of those activities count as dates! So we decided that a nice meal out – trying a new restaurant or repeating a GREAT one, was worth it about once a month or so.

In December, we went to Food Wine & Co, in Bethesda. Kirios had wanted to go for a while, especially since it’s so close by. When I first read the menu, I could tell why – it’s got all of his favorite things! I started things off with a wine. I ordered a flight board with 3 half glasses of red wine.  Kirios ordered a cocktail. For food, I had a hard time ordering, mostly because all the appetizers and sides sounded so good to me. We decided to start with the artisanal cheese plate, which included a yummy fig spread. My wines complimented the cheeses quite well.

For our main courses, I had the Bucatini Pasta with roasted butternut squash, sage, hazelnut, croutons, and brussel sprouts. It was creamy and hardy – perfect for a cold evening, and the hazelnuts gave it nice texture in addition to flavor. Kirios chose one of the specials – a duo of pork belly with a sweet potato purée and rockfish with sautéed kale. He ranted about the sweet potato purée, and I happily finished his well-prepared rockfish.

We did save room for dessert. Although it sounded like overkill, I took our attentive waiter’s suggestion and ordered the fried apple pie. It came with cinnamon spiced port, candied walnuts, and caramel ice cream. I’m a big apple pie fan, this was divine. Kirios was more dubious of the apple pie, so he hedged his bets by ordering a second dessert – molten chocolate cake with grand marnier, chocolate-covered almonds, cocoa streusel, and chocolate ice cream. It was tasty too, but I was pretty enamored with my fried pie.

After a meal like that, it’s safe to say that there will be many more date nights in our future!