Won't You Be My Valentine?

Shot in the Heart

I noticed the day after Christmas that all the sparkly ornaments and inflatable yard monstrosities  at Kroger had been banished to the Seasonal aisle and dismissively marked down  to 60% off.  Overnight, Cupid and his band of immodest, albeit angelic archers had winged in to create  a towering display of chocolates in shiny red boxes and cuddlesome teddy bears wearing little shirts with "I WUV U" emblazoned accross the front.  I thought it seemed a little premature but I recalled seeing Halloween decorations go up in July so I shrugged it off as crass commercialism.

It's six or seven weeks later and Valentine's Day is nigh.  Although clearly not as Hallmark-engineered as Sweetest Day or Administrative Professionals Day, the origins of St. Valentine's Day are murky at best.  A quick scan of Wikipedia yields no fewer than three distinctly different possible scenarios including executions, martyrdom, fertility dances, and/or pagan rituals involving animal sacrifices. How this evolved to its current status as America's Diningest Day I can't imagine.  Perhaps instead of killing fatted calves we are now becoming them.

Ask just about any server how much they like one of the busiest restaurant days of the year and they are likely to favor you with the stinkeye.  Loathsomely referred to as Another Amateur Night (along with New Year's Eve) Valentine's Day presents its own set of potential liabilities.  Demand is high, yes, but customers don't want four or six tops, just deuces, so therefore a restaurant's tables are full but they are not producing maximized revenues. To offset this, crafty propietors oftentimes proffer a "limited" or a "prix fixe" menu which gouges guarantees a higher spend per person. Frequent diners are onto this ruse and stay away in droves, so you end up with innocent naifs being stung by high prices and rushed waitpersons speeding up the steps of service to turn their tables quickly and eke out as many 15% tips as they can.  Sounds really romantic, no?

One year we catered a super high-end dinner for the top contributors to a local arts organization.  The event was on Valentine's Day, so we came up with what we called the I'm Falling For You menu. The first course was tomato veloute (soup) with a heart-shaped crouton floating on top.  Following that was a warm, heart-shaped artichoke-gruyere bread pudding nestled in wild field greens.  The entree was roast rack of lamb which had been separated in half so the bones could face each other, making a heart shape.  Finally, a slab of triple chocolate cake rested atop, you guessed it, a heart-shaped raspberry coulis.  So the heart "fell" through each course, starting on top and landing on the bottom.

Sometimes I'm so clever it's almost painful.  But you know what they say--love hurts.