Hitch

So, Carrie and I celebrated Valentine's Day this past Saturday. We went to Mitchell's Steakhouse and went to see Hitch.

Mitchell's was an interesting experience. Mitchell's is one of the premier restaurants in Columbus, owned by one of the premier restauranteurs in Ohio. Even though they don't enforce a strict dress-code (I called, just to make sure), it's a little intimidating to walk in there. It's not necessarily ritzi or shi-shi (none of the Cameron's restaurants are), but it's reputation is huge around here. Tell anybody you're going to Mitchell's for dinner and you'll get raised eyebrows and an "Ooh. Mitchell's." Everybody knows it.

And the reputation is deserved. The dinner was absolutely delish. We got variations of steak and veggies, a couple of drinks and a thick, gooey desert. We paid with a couple of giftcards I got from the LCT cast last year ($75) and the job ($12, after another dinner we had at another, less expensive, restaurant last year). Final out-of-pocket cost: $40, plus tip.

It was the little things that really impressed me. They gave Carrie a black napkin because she was wearing a black dress, and they didn't want to get white fibers on it. When the waiter brough our check out, he addressed us as "Mr. & Mrs. Smith." Stuff like that. But still, $140 for dinner.

Was it worth it? Yeah, I'd say it was.

***

However, one thing I was not expecting, and should have kept my big mouth shut about, was other people I had gone there with before. See, even though I had never been to Mitchell's steakhouse, I had been in the building before, when it was owned by another restaurant. On a date.

Needless to say, Carrie took great delight in torturing me with "Oh, who else did you come here with?" She eventually asked me why I stopped seeing the woman I had brought there before. I told her "Because she lived too far out of town and she was too tied to her family." That seemed to shut her up on the subject.

Fellas, a word of advice. Never talk to your wife about old girlfriends on Valentine's day.

***

Okay, Hitch.

Since Carrie and I hadn't been to the movies in months, I was having difficulty finding a movie I thougth we'd both enjoy. I had originally wanted to see Hitch. It seemed like a funny, sweet movie, but the reviews I had read had given it an only mediocre score. And there were other films that I wanted to see just as much: In Good Company and Sideways. Eventually, it came down to which movie would be starting the soonest after we planned to be done with dinner.

While I would have to agree with the reviews that Hitch isn't Citizen Kane, it is a funny, entertaining movie, and it doesn't try to be anything but that. Maybe all the reviewers still recuperating from their Oscar-season hangovers, but I really appreciate it when a movie has no pretentions that it's anything more than a date movie. It didn't try to make a statement on modern society (although it did), but it just wanted to entertain. And in that, it succeeded quite well.

***

All in all, a very good evening. Especially since it got us out of the library.