duck fat fries and a bacon popsicle

My sweet boyfriend wanted to take me out somewhere special for dinner for my birthday. I love that we go on dates. I hope we still go on dates after we have been married for 57 years.

Last Friday night, he picked me up and drove me to a surprise restaurant called Salt Air.

Neither of us had been there before. He found it online and decided to go there because reviews said it is for foodies and people who are adventurous with food. Score.

(Michael, so sweet that you spent all that time searching for a new restaurant to take me. I love you.)

They served us water in mason jars and gave us our one-page menu with things like "braised suckling pig" and "black garlic shrooms".

See where it says duck fat fries? I was all over it.

We were served chips and a goat cheese spread with capers. Yum.

My steak dinner came with pickled chili salad (made with the tops of celery stalks), caramelized chipollini onions, homemade steak sauce and duck fat fries.

Michael had rockfish grilled on a brick, or something crazy like that.

Then the special dessert of the night was a bacon popsicle! Crazy, right? They fried a thick piece of bacon, covered it in caramel and froze it. It was served with homemade brown butter ice cream, cinnamon pecan crumble and a homemade marshmallow that they cut in a square and toasted.

Of course Michael ordered it.

PS- sorry this picture stinks. Well most of these pictures are too dark. It was so dark in the restaurant! But romantic, so that's okay. When it comes to dinner dates, I will take dark and romantic over bright and obnoxious any day.

Michael loved the bacon popsicle. I loved everything else on his plate but the bacon popsicle. I thought it would be like a chocolate covered pretzel - a salty/sweet amazing combination. But all I could taste was smoky bacon. That's probably what they were going for though.

My dessert was less interesting, but delicious. A vanilla shortbread cake with peanut butter cream covered in chocolate ganache. How can I recreate this?? We all need it in our lives.

We enjoyed our dinner together so much. We did annoying things like hold hands over the table and stare at each other smiling. I'm sure everyone in that restaurant could tell we are crazy about each other.

And I'm sure the waiter knew when he saw me grab Michael's butt as we were leaving the restaurant. Classy, right?

Super-Boyfriend continued his wonderful night for me with shopping. Thank you, Super-Boyfriend. He took me to the outlets around 8 pm when hardly anyone was there because it was negative 16 degrees outside.

But we walked around holding hands and freezing together.

He took me to the Yankee Candle store to continue my never ending search for the Mandarin Cranberry candle I love. They had one in a weird size. I'm waiting for the right one. You understand.

I think he enjoyed it. He said every new case of candles he came too, he had to smell ones that caught his eye. It was like a weird game he was playing.

Oh! I almost forgot. He sent me flowers at work for my birthday. Bright, yellow, cheery flowers.

Random side note. I'm totally bragging now, sorry. Moving on...

When the outlets closed, he drove me home and kissed me at the door. He is very traditional.

It was a wonderful winter night.