Valentine's Dinner at The Town House

About two weeks ago Rich and I looked through a couple of the Valentine's menus available and decided that The Town House's ticked all our foodie boxes for our night of romance. We were both looking forward to it all day yesterday and to sum up, we were not disappointed.

Rich had already pulled out all the romantic stops with flowers delivered at work and later jewellery so we decided to have a pre dinner cocktail at The Colour Inn to prolong the evening. We've always liked going to The Colour Inn, when it first opened under it's former name it became a bit of a favourite. The cocktails are impressive, the little bowls of cocktail snacks are a nice touch and I find the atmosphere a bit more relaxing than some of the other cocktail bars in the city, you can go there but feel you don't have to dress up quite as much, so perfect for impromptu visits.

Definitely worth a visit to The Colour Inn to brighten up an evening. After a quick cocktail we headed straight to The Town House, it was beautifully decorated with rose petals an all the tables, a lot of candle light and tables far enough away from each other that we could feel we weren't being intruded on by other diners and they in turn would not be by us. There was some lovely jazz lilting quietly in the background, the whole atmosphere felt very vintage and almost from another time.

We had sort of half decided at our first glance of the menu two weeks ago what we wanted to eat but the choices were all very tantalising. In the end we stuck with our choices of the sharing platter for 2 for our starter. The platter had a gorgeously delicious thinly sliced smoked ham, it tasted very much like the German Black Forest ham, very smokey very strongly flavoured and very tasty. Best eaten on it's own as the flavour would over power anything with it. There was a ramekin of chicken liver and port pate, smooth as silk and rich but worked very nicely with the lovely seeded bread that came with it. I particularly enjoyed the shot glass of dip that accompanied the platter, it tasted very nutty I was surprised when I was told it was smoked aubergine, the first time in ages I have enjoyed aubergine. I could go on there was an amazing light hollandaise on the veg, the olives, for me were just perfect and the smoked salmon was wonderful.

For our main course we had chosen the 28 day aged steak for two, cooked rare, triple cooked chips, vegetables, three sauces and a bottle of Malbec, fully of blackberries and a smooth richness. The steak was cooked very well seared fully on the outside but the middle was lovely and pink and the flavour of the meat was superb. The meat was accompanied by peppercorn sauce, béarnaise and what I think was a red wine onion rich gravy type sauce. Chips were crispy but fluffy and the vegetables were very nice with the gravy. I couldn't fault any of it, Rich and I probably should not have eaten it all but it was too good not to.

 By this point I was full, happy and a bit sleepy, the lovely warm feeling you feel after eating such good food and wine. Pudding should not have been on the cards, and yet, without knowing it, had tapped into my Achilles heel, crème brûlée, and it's derivatives. The Town House had cinnamon and nutmeg burnt cream and it was going to be mine. And it was. 

We went home full but happy a very successful Valentine's, easily my best ever in fact. So raise your cocktail glasses, from the wonderful Colour Inn, to the lovely Town House we will be coming back, hopefully for dinner but also brunch, you won't be able to get rid of us.