We hope this series inspires you to spend a little quality time with your partner in our fair city. There are so many fantastic different places and wonderful different ways to make your night a special one. We’re going to explore a few over the next few weeks and share our experiences with you! (For more date night ideas, check out more of our series!)
Date nights are special and wonderful and grand. And, also…sometimes…well…to be honest, if you’re like me, you WANT to spend the evening talking about anything BUT your kid(s). And then—halfway through your appetizer—you realize that maybe you haven’t really done anything remarkable lately EXCEPT think about/play with/worry about your kids and your parenting decisions.
Our usual date night involves dressing up a little, leaving in bit of a fluster because we always seem to be behind in the bedtime routine when the sitter arrives, going out to dinner, eating food that is yummy but kind of expensive for our budget (but, it’s Date Night, so we can splurge, right?), attempting to talk about anything but our boys, and then rushing home to relieve the sitter.
My husband is a quasi-foodie (in that he truly enjoys eating beautifully prepared and delicious food). I’m usually content to eat anything I didn’t have to think about, purchase, prepare, cook, serve, clean up afterward—or any combination of those things. About a year ago, I realized that some of our cherished date nights were turning into sharing really good (and kind of expensive) meals that lacked excitement. With two kids under three at the time, who could blame us? It’s hard for us to generate interesting conversation with someone we’re in the trenches with—we were tired!
We needed a new kind of date night. I saw a blurb about Dinner Lab opening in Nashville and decided that the idea behind it would shake up the comfortable (and somewhat boring) routine into which we’d let ourselves fall.
The premise is relatively simple: new and rising chefs get to try out dishes; diners get to judge the food and help steer the chefs toward menus that will satisfy and stimulate their audience. Courses are served in odd and eccentric places (some of the meals we’ve eaten include Jamaican food in a parking lot behind Spot’s Pet Supply, a late summer picnic at Fort Houston, and a crawfish boil at Deavor). Strangers sit together at long tables and are encouraged to discuss the food, the drink pairings, and the experience.
This is exactly what my extroverted husband loves—meeting new people and eating interesting food. I enjoy this as well, but I really appreciate that I don’t feel a ton of pressure to make conversation with a man I know pretty darn well by now. Instead, I get to watch the man I fell in love with shine as he literally gathers energy from the strangers with whom we share our meal. We get to experience something new together and rehash the conversations, the service, the chef, and the food afterward.
Dinner Lab is a member-based club (you sign up for a year’s worth of events). If you’re thinking you want to embark on a similar adventure but aren’t sure you want to pay dues, check out POP Nashville (a space open for pop-up restaurants and events). Knowing you’ll participate in a once-in-a-lifetime event or menu with your partner and meet new folks who are eager for new experiences too might just give you two something to talk about (something other than potty training and soccer schedules)!
What do you do when you need to shake up your date night routine? What local date night places would you recommend to experience as a couple?
[…] Added my two cents on Date Nights to the NashMomsBlog.com series this week! Check it out here: http://nashville.citymomsblog.com/date-night-in-nashville-turn-dinner-dates-into-culinary-adventures… […]
We fall into exactly the same habit of date nights you are describing. Our best experiences have been when we plan date outings that are atypical in timing and content, such as taking a hunters safety course together. Even when we can plan an activity that we truly enjoy (such as caving or hiking) and take our kids instead of doing something kid-centric, it ends up feeling like a date.
Funny you mention that, Sam. We used to do a date-of-the-month and take turns planning it… I remember taking an archery class together and Joe trying to teach me how to golf (actually, that date was terrible now that I think about it). This was before kids. Maybe we need to start doing adventures like that again! Thanks for your comment! -mw