Date night with my honey at Cafe Ena - Dairy Foods

Erik and I had our first date night in a long time last Friday evening. We have a lot of great dinners at home, but there is something really special about going out. We used to do it all the time, probably too much, when we first started dating about four and a half years ago, but we'd go to places like Old Chicago and Champps, casual dinners where we'd drink beer and always order nachos as an appetizer. Did I mention I gained about 10 pounds those first six months?

Fast forward a few years and we became a bit more sophisticated and began going out to eat less and when we did, it would generally be for special occasions. Some of favorite restaurants over the years are Lucias in Uptown (both of us), Cafe Lurcat (me), Manny's (Erik), El Meson (both) and Cafe Ena (both). We've actually only been to Cafe Ena twice but it holds very special meaning because it is the restaurant we ate at the night we got engaged in September 07. We had a great meal on the patio and afterwards took a walk and Erik proposed on a sidewalk on a street in South Minneapolis. It was proposal perfection.

Our date on Friday began with drinks at Figlio in Uptown and then we had an amazing meal at Cafe Ena. Cafe Ena is an adorable, small restaurant on 46th and Grand in Minneapolis. It serves latin fusion food that is delicious and bursts with flavor. I started with split pea soup with proscuitto (this might sound weird, but I LOVE split pea soup, it has a bad reputation, but in reality is velvety and delicious) and then I had proscuitto wrapped grouper. Erik had a caesar salad and jambalaya. We shared a bottle of Riesling. I'm actually not a huge fan of sweet white wine, but anytime Erik is willing to have wine with me I let him choose and he can only handle sweet whites. I have hope he will come around.

Me, a bottle of wine deep...