Mommy-Chic in Suburbia: Sunday Night = Date Night

As parents of two small children, we rarely have time to exchange a couple of full sentences, not to mention have a full blown, uninterrupted conversation over a nice meal. After reviewing the list of Zagat's Top 50 Best Restaurants in San Francisco for 2014, hubby put his foot down and said that we must have date night in one of these places, before the year is over. With our ever so busy schedules and coordination of babysitting, Sunday night became our date night. I hastily set up babysitting for the kids (thankfully with no issues), and went to work on finding the perfect place for our, rare-to-come-by date night.

If you tried making dinner reservations at a semi-decent restaurant in the Bay Area in the recent past, you know that unless you plan this weeks in advance, and you don't want to eat dinner at 9 p.m., you will most likely not be able to find a single table, anywhere. Needless to say, even on a Sunday night, I wasn't able to get a reservation in any one of the Top 50 restaurants, that we haven't already been to.

With that, I decided to take a different approach. The list was abandoned and the search was narrowed based on neighborhood. Russian Hill, to me, has that quintessential San Francisco feel. The narrow, hilly streets with trolley lines and quaint restaurants, is so San Francisco.

The restaurant we settled on wasn't quite in Russian Hill, but just a couple of blocks off from it (we'll get there eventually). The menu and decor enticed me to try it. So try it we did. The name is simple, 1760. The cuisine is contemporary american. The staff is extremely friendly and knowledgeable. I was impressed by how our waitress was able to remember our order without writing it down. She was able to describe the ingredients of each dish, along with the price, without skipping a beat. She was able to suggest a drink that my husband may prefer based on his taste preferences. The menu is all family style (my personal favorite), and is organized from smallest to largest dish. A simple, one pager. The suggestion was to order 5 to 6 plates for two people. Of course, keeping in mind your eating habits as you make your selections. We went with 4 dishes, to save room for dessert.

Since this was date night, I wanted to make sure we're not distracted by our phones. As a result, I didn't take photos of most of our dishes. In the end however, I had to grab at least a couple to share. We ordered the lobster ceviche, grilled mackerel, grilled pork belly (because you can't skip the pork belly), and the fried duck sandwich. The dishes were beautifully presented, and were more than enough for us to fill up on and tasty, of course. I have to say, I was a bit bummed that there wasn't one single item on the dessert menu that had dark chocolate in it. The chocolate desserts were either white or milk chocolate. For dessert, we decided on green tea white chocolate, raspberry almond cake. I added a wet cappuccino at the end. Coffee is a must at any time of day when small kids are in the mix.

Dinner was followed by a short walk in the neighborhood. All-in-all, our Sunday night, date night was a success. And on a Sunday, you don't feel bad that you're home by 9:30 p.m. Here is to more such nights!