Five years! Five! Half a decade! That sounds pretty great, right? In the same way that saying ‘I’m in my mid-twenties’ sounds more substantial than saying ‘I’m 23′, Jason and I having been together half a decade sounds like it’s got some clout. And I like it! We celebrated our three year anniversary just a couple of months after I started writing Cider with Rosie, and if you’ve been reading my blog right from the off you might remember that I titled the blog post about our anniversary ‘We are Three’, and accidentally made everyone think that the post was going to be a pregnancy announcement! Ha!
This anniversary was probably our most low-key we’ve ever had, I think mainly because now that we’re looking ahead to our wedding next year it didn’t really seem like such a big deal as it always felt to me before! Anyhow, it was kind of nice to have a quiet day at home together since we’ve both been so very busy of late. We spent Sunday doing ‘home-y’ type things- a spot of cleaning, colossal amounts of laundry (you guys, this weekend I bought myself a new laundry basket and airer. I should probably pretend that these purchases are far too dull and insignificant to make me happy, but I just can’t manage it even if I tried…) and drinking approximately one hundred coffees each, all whilst trying to ignore the pesterings of the little dog who still isn’t allowed out on a proper walk yet.
The Sunday evening though? There was a whole lot of fancy going on on Sunday evening! We got all dressed up and headed to The Tablespoon for dinner- and even though the burger with chipotle mayo that I’d been daydreaming about all day was completely sold out (a reason to go back again, as if we needed another one!), it was still easiest the loveliest meal we’ve eaten in a long while!
Now, I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned here before, but Jason and I have this ongoing competition over who can order the best food in every restaurant we go to. We turn pretty much everything we do into a competition (you mean you *don’t* race to see who can get into bed quickest each night, and who can hang up first at the end of a phone call?) so it’s basically just another way for us for ‘win’ at something stupid and insignificant ;) But for this meal- we declared it a draw. I was winner of the first course (which we shared anyway), Jason was the winner of the second, and there wasn’t an ounce of gloating all evening!
We started off with olives and a couple of glasses of bubbles, then shared starters of steak tartare, and burrata with roasted vegetables and chickpea puree on toasted sourdough. Both dishes were delicious, but the burrata/roasted veg/garlicky chickpea combo was outstanding. I could happily have eaten a portion of that as my main course, to be honest! For mains, we ordered spatchcock chicken, pork belly, and sides of mashed potato with tons of olive oil, chickpeas with chorizo (which was incredible!), spinach, and tenderstem broccoli. I would say it was an eyes-bigger-than-stomach situation, but if I’m being honest…we smashed it. Barely left a spoonful or two of anything behind. Amazing.
After our meal, lovely Anya (who we met last time we visited The Tablespoon) suggested we have coffees and finish our wine outside in the little garden. It’s the loveliest space- all heated and sheltered, and lined with pots full of herbs. Jason was particularly taken with the bay tree, because he’s currently trying and uhh…not succeeding…at bringing ours back to life after it turned yellow and moulted a couple of months back. Sidenote: is moulted the word you use for plants? I’m certain it’s not, but can’t think of the correct word so…
The rest of the evening was spent drinking lattes under blankets outside on that little terrace, talking about dreams (our actual most recent nighttime dreams, and also our figurative ones), when we might get another puppy (I want one right this very second!), the chances of Jason being able to revive our dying bay tree, and about how dangerous the sort of attentive service that means you never actually get to the bottom of your glass of wine can be! ;)
Thank you x100 to the charming team at The Tablespoon for taking such good care of us all evening. So glad to have such a completely amazing restaurant local to us!
:: What I wore :: Blouse from Oasis, lace bandeau from Simone Perele, skirt c/o Boden (last season, super similar here), wedges from LK Bennett.
p.s. Jason looked super dashing, but was too hungry to want to hang about having me take his photo before we sat down to eat ;)
