A Valentine’s Day Dinner @ The Living Room

Happy Valentine’s Day!  I hope you’re enjoying a great day with those you love; whether it be your spouse, significant other, family, friends or pets.  I always see Valentine’s Day as a day to celebrate all the love you have in your life – no matter who or what it’s coming from.

Today I’m doing something a little different on my blog – a restaurant review!  One of my goals this year was to grow my blog – and I want to do that not only in readership, but in topics I write about.  As much as I love writing about beauty and makeup, I want to start incorporating more lifestyle topics into my blog as well.

For Valentine’s Day this year we decided to go low key and just go for a nice dinner and forgo gifts.  I started researching restaurants earlier this week via Open Table and landed on The Living Room.  I’d been wanting to pay them a visit for a while now and it seemed like a great spot for a Valentine’s Dinner.  I should mention that we never go for our Valentine’s dinner on Valentine’s Day – I hate fixed menu’s and crowds, so we always for a few days before or after V-Day.

When we arrived the first thing I noticed were the two outdoor, wood burning fireplaces that flank either sides of their patio.  It was chilly the night we were there and it created a lovely ambience as you walk up the door.  I can only imagine that this is a highly popular spot during the summer months.

The Living Room appears to be an old bungalow converted into a restaurant, with a centre bar, a more private dining area at the back and a variety of table setups throughout the front and side of the restaurant (I wish I had taken pics of the inside).  The lighting was soft and light and it had a warm and cozy ambience. It suits its name very well.

We were greeted by a friendly hostess who led us to a cozy corner table in the back dining area.  I immediately observed that the table was pretty small.  Thankfully we didn’t have anyone sitting next to us until about halfway through our meal but if you had people on both sides of you it could get cramped pretty quickly.

Our waiter came by and introduced himself and offered us still water. We each ordered drinks – I had a Fresh Cherry cocktail that was a mixture of Black Cherry Grey Goose Vodka, dry Curacao, cherry Morlacco, fresh lime, and soda.  D ordered the Dealer’s Choice, which is essentially is whatever the Bartender feels like making for you that night.  I forgot the name of what ended up getting but it was some kind of concoction that contained whiskey.  I found my drink to be fairly refreshing and light; D’s drink was quite strong and sweet.  Let’s just say he ordered one of what I had ordered when he finished his.

We perused the menus for a bit but the choice of a starter was an easy one – fondue, of course.  I had heard great things about it and because it’s cheese and bread and cheesy bread so I didn’t see how we could go wrong.  The fondue comes with bread to dip but D, being the meatatarian that he is, decided he wanted to add sausage to it as well.  So we did.

The fondue arrived shortly thereafter and it was delicious!  It was smooth, rich and creamy and had a great balance of flavours.  Despite containing both truffles and truffle oil, it had just a hint of truffle which was good because I’m not the biggest truffle fan.

The fondue was accompanied by a generous basket of baguette cubes that were the perfect texture – firm enough to pierce and dip into the fondue without falling apart but fresh enough not be dry.  The Italian sausage we ordered was actually pretty lean (which is a little weird for an Italian Sausage) so we both found it lacked a little flavour although that didn’t stop us from devouring it.

We had ordered our main at the same time as the fondue and given that I had skipped lunch that day, ordering the whole chicken seemed like a good idea.  Typically our eyes are always bigger than our stomach and after stuffing ourselves full with the fondue we realized the error in our judgement.  Especially when this arrived:

Apparently we didn’t think a whole chicken was going to cut it so we had also ordered sides of the smoked pomme puree and orange-glazed carrots.  Everything looked delicious so we dug in.

I found the chicken to be moist and juicy with a distinct lemon flavour.  It was good – but I’m not sure it was the best chicken I’ve ever had and for the price I was kind of expecting more, to be honest.  The accompanying gravy definitely added to it and made it more enjoyable.

The potatoes were creamy and most definitely smoky – perhaps a little too smoky for liking.  When I topped them with some gravy that diffused the smokiness a bit; however the carrots were sweet and crisp and we definitely enjoyed those.

Unfortunately we had no room for dessert so our meal ended there, so we finished our drinks, grabbed our doggy bag and went on our way.

Overall, I was pretty pleased with our experience; the fondue was fantastic and I’d definitely go back just for that.  I think you could easily make a meal of just the fondue if you ordered additional accompaniments.   I don’t think I’d order the chicken again though.

I was very impressed with the service we received – our server was prompt without being intrusive and friendly and personable.  We never felt rushed and were able to relax and enjoy our meal.  Which is totally what I was looking for in a Valentine’s Day dinner.  If you’re ever in the area, I’d recommend it.

Thanks for reading!