My old girl came up with a new twist on the restaurant game a few weeks ago. She told me one morning that she was going to “whisk me away” to a mystery restaurant for lunch. I wasn't allowed to ask questions about it or to know anything about it until we got there. So we jumped in the car about lunch time and she drove kind a circuitous route to a Mediterranean restaurant that we had passed many times over the years. Whenever we drove by there I would say “We need to try that place one of these days”, but we never did until I got whisked away to it.
After a delicious lunch of dolmas, falafel and other middle eastern goodies, my wife informed me that it was now my turn to pick a restaurant to whisk her away to for lunch some day soon. I sort of felt like the pressure was on for me to find a restaurant that we hadn't been to before and that my wife would like. At the time she was trying to stick to a diet that was high in veggies and fish and low in red meat, so I had to pick something that would provide a fair number of meatless or fish dishes. Also, I kind of wanted to make a short day trip out of it because we had bought a new GPS and I wanted to test it on the way to and from the restaurant. So I decided to go to a town about sixty miles from here that we've been to many times before because it has a lot of shops that have the sort of stuff that my wife likes to shop for. It's a small town but I had done an Internet search and discovered that there was a new restaurant there that had just the sort of menu that would line up well with my wife's diet.
The next week I told her that I was going to whisk her away to a restaurant that was a bit of a drive from here and that I was going to use the opportunity to test the new GPS. My wife is a much better driver than passenger on these day trips. If she's driving and I'm navigating, I just check out the scenery and watch the map and/or GPS to let her know if there is anything unusual coming up. If I'm driving and she's the passenger, she redoes her makeup, rearranges everything in her purse, cleans and rearranges everything she can reach in the car, calls all of her friends and then tells me that she's bored and wants to know how long it will be before we reach our destination. So I decided that it would be better if she drove to the restaurant. I put the address in the GPS and told her to follow it to the magical mystery bistro.
Even though the restaurant is only about sixty miles from our house, there is no direct route there, and some of the roads are back country trails. So it took nearly an hour and a half to get there. All the way there my wife kept trying to guess where we were going, but I wouldn't tell her. When we were within about ten miles of the restaurant we were driving on a road that pretty much only goes to the little town where the restaurant lives, so my wife guessed correctly that we were going to that town. We have eaten at most of the restaurants there, so she asked me if each of them was the mystery restaurant but again, I didn't spill the beans, or the hummus, which is probably a better analog considering the restaurant's menu. Finally, when we were about three miles from the restaurant, my wife guessed where we were going. I still didn't confirm it for her, but she hit the nail on the head. When we pulled into the parking lot my wife started laughing. I asked what was so funny and she told me that that restaurant is the one that she had picked to whisk me away to when it was her turn again. We had a terrific lunch at the mystery restaurant and then did some shopping and even bought a few things. Then we headed home.
I did another twist on the "whisk me away" restaurant game this past week when our son flew in for a visit from out of state. My wife and daughter and I picked him up at the airport about noon. Since we hadn't eaten lunch yet, I whisked all of them away to a restaurant where none of us had ever eaten before. It was a funky little place with a lot of local flavor. We all enjoyed both the ambiance and the food.
This week it is my wife's turn to be the whisker and my turn to be the whiskee (or maybe whiskey, which definitely suits me better). I can't wait to see where we go.
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