When life hands you lemons, PART 1

Several weeks ago (like back in January) I made reservations at a romantic Italian restaurant for Valentine's Day. I'd heard good things about this place, and one look at the menu told me we wouldn't be disappointed. It looked romantic, it was decently priced, and the Rad Boyfriend and I had been jonesing for some authentic Italian cuisine since before the holidays. In fact, we'd been jonsing for this particular restaurant's Italian food for quite some time; the only thing that had stopped us from trying it earlier was the fact that they don't take reservations. And if I'm gonna get all dressed up to have a nice dinner, you better believe I'm making reservations!

But, ever the optimist, I called them anyway to see if they were making exceptions to their no-res rule for Valentine's Day--and they were! Hooray! Delicious Italian food! Plans made, we began discussing what we'd order, if we should bring our own wine and pay the corking fee, what we would do afterwards, etc. RB must have mentioned how much he was looking forward to finally trying this place at least a dozen times since I made the reservation. We were stoked!

On Sunday morning (as in The Day Before Valentine's Day), as we leisurely sipped our coffee and talked about how much we were looking forward to this week, I received a call from a strange phone number. Never one to answer calls from unfamiliar numbers, I let it go to voicemail. Upon checking it several minutes later, this is what I heard:

"Hi Danielle, this is Jenna calling from --- ------ confirming your reservation for tomorrow night at 7:30. I also wanted to make sure that you knew about our 5-course prix fixe menu that we're serving for Valentine's Day. It's $70 a person and......" 

I stopped listening at that point. She could have told me it came with a basket of kittens to keep us company during dinner and I wouldn't have cared. Why? BECAUSE NO, I WAS NOT AWARE OF THE PRIX FIXE MENU. There was no mention of it on their website, nor did anyone tell me about it when I made the reservation. No way were be about to drop $200 on dinner just because it happened to be February 14th.

I was pissed. Not so much about not having dinner plans, but about someone informing me that I was expected to spend at least $140 the following night whether I liked it or not. There is nothing I hate more than feeling like I'm being taken advantage of. RB and I talked it over, and it was sort of a no-brainer: we canceled the reservation. And in an awesome twist of fate, it turns out it was the best thing that could have happened to us.

[Stay tuned for PART 2 later today]