Thursday, July 27, 2006
I made the mistake of telling my wife we were having a “date”. Not bad in and of itself, but that puts a lot of pressure on me to make sure she has a good time while I romance her. What I should have done was take her to the Charles in Baltimore to see “Wordplay” or one of the other art films showing there and then taken her to dinner someplace that was participating in “Baltimore Restaurant Week”. More on that later.
Instead, last night my wife and I went to see “Pirates of the Caribbean : Dead Man’s Chest” at the Arundel Mills Mall. There are a lot of movies out right now that we haven’t had a chance to see, and I had a pair of free tickets (matinee only) that were burning a hole in my pocket. It was a good movie, albeit too much of a sequel and had a lack of chemistry between some of the principals. I’m notoriously hard to please when it comes to movies, but the story was consistent and there were enough good moments mixed in with the “action fluff” that I barely noticed the over-long running time.
Afterwards we went to Remomo, a local restaurant in the same mall. It’s in a primo spot and gets a lot of business, as evidenced by the much-loved plastic menus. The food, as always, was great. The service wasn’t stellar, but I don’t expect much from a restaurant in a mall near closing time on a weeknight. Besides, I read far too many waiter blogs to think the world revolves around me just because I’ve ordered a glass of wine.
Baltimore Resturant Week is a kind-of nice stab at attracting folks to come into the city to eat at a nice restaurant on a weeknight. Other cities do it with great success, apparently, so hopefully it will work as well here. Each restaurant will offer a $30 pris-fixe dinner and some a $20 pris-fixe lunch. That seems like a bargain on the surface, but my eyebrow went up when I first heard about it. $30 a person? That’s about what I usually pay, anyway, so how is this a bargain? Turns out, the pris-fixe is a three-course meal, which includes an appetizer, entrée, and dessert. There we go. I rarely order appetizers or desserts. Usually we just get entrees and several glasses of beer or wine (drinks, of course, are not included in the pris-fixe menu offerings). We might go to a participating restaurant, but I’m not sure if we’ll bother with their pris-fixe menu. One nice thing is that several parking garages are participating as well by offering “$3 discounted rates.” There’s no info posted anywhere on whether that means $3 per hour or $3 off the hourly rate or $3 off the entire parking fee, but discounted parking in Baltimore is nothing to be sneezed at.
Instead, last night my wife and I went to see “Pirates of the Caribbean : Dead Man’s Chest” at the Arundel Mills Mall. There are a lot of movies out right now that we haven’t had a chance to see, and I had a pair of free tickets (matinee only) that were burning a hole in my pocket. It was a good movie, albeit too much of a sequel and had a lack of chemistry between some of the principals. I’m notoriously hard to please when it comes to movies, but the story was consistent and there were enough good moments mixed in with the “action fluff” that I barely noticed the over-long running time.
Afterwards we went to Remomo, a local restaurant in the same mall. It’s in a primo spot and gets a lot of business, as evidenced by the much-loved plastic menus. The food, as always, was great. The service wasn’t stellar, but I don’t expect much from a restaurant in a mall near closing time on a weeknight. Besides, I read far too many waiter blogs to think the world revolves around me just because I’ve ordered a glass of wine.
Baltimore Resturant Week is a kind-of nice stab at attracting folks to come into the city to eat at a nice restaurant on a weeknight. Other cities do it with great success, apparently, so hopefully it will work as well here. Each restaurant will offer a $30 pris-fixe dinner and some a $20 pris-fixe lunch. That seems like a bargain on the surface, but my eyebrow went up when I first heard about it. $30 a person? That’s about what I usually pay, anyway, so how is this a bargain? Turns out, the pris-fixe is a three-course meal, which includes an appetizer, entrée, and dessert. There we go. I rarely order appetizers or desserts. Usually we just get entrees and several glasses of beer or wine (drinks, of course, are not included in the pris-fixe menu offerings). We might go to a participating restaurant, but I’m not sure if we’ll bother with their pris-fixe menu. One nice thing is that several parking garages are participating as well by offering “$3 discounted rates.” There’s no info posted anywhere on whether that means $3 per hour or $3 off the hourly rate or $3 off the entire parking fee, but discounted parking in Baltimore is nothing to be sneezed at.
# posted by Renfield @ 11:33 AM 
