Dessert-First Date Night

By Christy Pessemier 

“I really miss us going out together,” I told my husband one night. We both wanted to date each other again, and discover fun local spots together, but it was just too expensive. Until one day - I decided to make a public experiment: go on a weekly date and keep it under twenty dollars. Then, I blogged about each date: where we went, what it was like, what discounts we used - and the exact total.

“Do you really think people are going to care where we went on date night?” I asked my husband, not long after I started 20DollarDatenight.net. “Are you kidding?!” he said. “A lot of people are really tight financially, and their marriages are hurting. They will be thrilled to know what they can do to make things better.”

He was right. A few months later, we were featured on 97.3 KIRO radio, and then on KOMO 4 News. And now, we’re on Woodinville Patch. A huge first for us as a married couple!

Here’s how it works, each week, we pull a different city out of our Date Night Jar. Whoever picks the city gets to pick where we go too. Most of our dates are in King or Snohomish counties, but we also travel to Pierce County periodically to drop our kids off at their grandparents; and we get an overnight date night out of it. Last week’s date night was split between Bellevue and Bothell. Sometimes we incorporate two cities if we have special discounts; or if we just want to change it up.

Date night did not happen for us last weekend. Plans got rearranged and we found ourselves with no pocket of time available to sneak out for some time together. Can you relate? Yes, it was one of those weekends for us too. But we weren’t giving up. We still went out, just on Tuesday night instead.

It’s fun to break the rules a little sometimes. We flipped things and had coffee and dessert first, and then had dinner.

Our dessert was at in Bellevue’s The Bravern shopping center. We walked into a line that stretched out the door. Still we used every minute we were waiting trying to decide on one flavor of gelato. They were all billowing out of the steel trays, in flavors like salted caramel, Tiramisu and white mint. I was eyeing the deep, dark fudgy chocolate Hubby and I each ordered an Affogato (hot espresso poured over ice cream or gelato), one espresso and two mini biscotti with a $20 gift card and tip.

We sat in the corner, looking out onto The Bravern’s walkway. Bellevue was quiet outside on a Tuesday night, but not inside. The place was busy. A chilled out techno music was playing in the background. Everyone had the same idea we did. I looked around to see couples and families, and individual people all eating out of the snappy metal martini glasses Vovito serves gelato in.

One sip of the espresso had me in a wave of nostalgia. It tasted just like the espresso Hubby and I had when we were visiting family in Greece. Those cute little cups delivered a powerhouse of flavor. It was coffee with the volume turned up. I savored the blend of espresso and chocolate gelato in my Affogato and Hubby even gave me a bite of his coconut gelato Affogato. Yummmm!

We hung around for a few minutes and then headed north to Wild Vine Bistro in Bothell. To read the rest of the blog, go to http://20dollardatenight.net/dessert-before-dinner-and-hidden-treasure-in-bothell/