Our 16th Anniversary and Valentine's Day

 

Our wedding date was February 5, 1010.  Valentine's Day, of course, is February 14th, 9 days later, every year.  So, lately, we've been celebrating both occasions together on Valentine's Day, because our favorite restaurant, Metropole, a 7-minute walk from home, has a special meal each year now, in spite of the fact that the Dutch as a whole do NOT celebrate the occasion.  It's an American celebration that is slowly jumping The Big Pond.

So, sense and sensibility!

And that was last evening!

Here's the menu (which I'll translate as we go along).

But first, we always love starting with a latte macchiato, just because!

Metropole is one of the few places where they give you the heated milk and foam

and YOU pour in the coffee.  We love the ethos of it!

It was a four-course meal, starting with:

CREAM OF THE CROP

Salad with salmon fritter, cucumber

crudites and sweet and sour carrot

Followed by:

ROSES AND MOONSHINE

Celeriac rose infused with hot beetroot broth

How cleaver is THAT!  

The broth opened up the celeriac rose before our very eyes.

Then came the main course:

YIN AND YANG

Mini pheasant and duck roll with cranberry jus

pearls of turnip and kohlrabi

and crispy potato heart

Then it was dessert:

HEART MELT

White chocolate heart

with raspberry mousse and hot blackberry sauce

O M G

The taste alone was worth it but...

just look at the visual, (thanks to Astrid)!

We topped it all off with a decaf cappuccino, of course:

The recap:

And then we just sat there, relaxing, until we were one of the last couples to leave.

This memory has become a tradition for us now, just like when we celebrate Christmas Eve there with Jaap each year.  Remember?  These are the pegs of the year upon which we hang our special celebrations and memories.  Lest we forget!