09 | March | 2014 | Chocolate Covered Race Medals

Happy Sunday everyone 🙂 Who has had an awesome weekend? What’d you do?

Welp, this morning started off with a little bit of a late start (thank you time change), a good run, and I’m about to head out the door to a blogger meet up. Fun!

But before I get to that . . . let’s back track to last night and the real point of this post 🙂

Being Nice Pays Off

Last night was our originally planned anniversary dinner.

Promise you, this is our last anniversary celebration 🙂 This dinner was SUPPOSED to be last Wednesday, but Zach thought he was traveling so we postponed the reservation. And then he ended up not traveling so we did lots of celebration in between :). I hope you all don’t mind :).

We started off the evening at a new-to-us bar in the neighborhood, Churchhill’s Public House. We were only there for a drink (4 dollar Malbec for this girl, hello!), but we definitely enjoyed ourselves. There were tons of TV’s showing all different kinds of sports, all different kinds of games and seating area options. I could easily see us going back there for sporting events in the future. . .

The highlight of the evening was a date to one of our FAVORITE local spots, Duo. We made 730 reservations and were sure to show up early (closer to 715 than 730) to get our table.

We were warned that our table wasn’t ready yet, since we were early. . . but that it shouldnt’ be a problem to be seated by 730. So we went to the bar to order a drink to enjoy with dinner.

Welp, 730 came and passed with no table. Thankfully, the hostess came up to us and let us know that the people in our table were eating their dessert and that it shouldn’t be long. . .

By 745, I started to get a little annoyed, but stayed quiet. This is when the bartender ALSO apologized, and let us know they were still eating their dessert, but that the kitchen was going to be sending us out a snack.

Sorry for the poor lighting, but that is salmon in an amazing fresh and spicy puree of some sort. It was tiny, but helped to make us feel a little better about the situation. Pays to be nice 🙂

And then 8 PM rolled around and we still weren’t seated. Whomp whomp. By about 805-810 we were finally taken to our table with TONS of apologies.

Now don’t get me wrong, I totally get that restaurants get busy and patrons stay longer than anticipated. . . but almost 40 minutes was a little frustrating. Oh well . . . we knew the meal would be good.

Like every meal at Duo, we started with marinated olives and flat bread, that didn’t dissapoint :).

And split a mushroom tart appetizer that was tiny but PACKED with flavor.

But my entree stole the show. Grilled chicken in a jalepeno cheddar polenta with jelly on the top. AMAAZING. I literally couldn’t stop eating it, so good.

Zach got a braised beef dish and we both polished the meals together without problem.

The real nice surprise was when we got the check — not only was our snack free (which we anticipated) our first round of drinks were free. I promise you we didn’t mention that it was our anniversary this time, they just felt bad for the wait.

And let me tell you — that is one way to totally make the wait seem OK. Everyone in the restaurant was apologetic, they gave us a snack, and comped us drinks. I’ll wait 30 minutes for that 🙂

And that my friends, is why it pays to be nice 🙂

And of course, we capped off the evening with Little Man ice cream — AMAZING. The place was packed at almost 10 o’clock, but TOTALLY worth it. Best dessert ever. Love this warmer weather Denver is having 🙂

Question of the Morning: Have you had a situation like this before when you made reservations? Were you nice 😉