5 Local Spots to Dine with Your Darling: Patch Picks

Welcome to the second installment of Patch Picks!

Each week, Patch will run this feature, highlighting editor and reader picks of great local businesses, destinations, services, organizations, ways to spend a day off, and more.  

You’ll find useful lists to help you, your family, friends, and significant others find the best places for everything from Sunday brunch to New Year’s Eve celebrations, pumpkin patches, date night destinations, florists, girlfriend nights out, kids party places, parks and more.

This week's spotlight falls on five local spots to take your sweetheart for Valentine's Day.

• — Feel like a fancy dinner with your babe? Try out the Surf and Turf. The dinner for two, with a 12- to 16-ounce lobster tail, with a 12-ounce filet, coleslaw, bean salad, with soup or salad and potato of your choice will run $67.45. The meal is large enough to split, said manager Jim Abbott.
• — No word on whether heart-shaped pizzas will return this year, but you can dine with your darling for $$33.17, which buys you a large pizza (we went with sausage), a mixed basket of appetizers and two sodas. They'll also offer their beer bucket special, with five domestic bottles for $10.
• — The salads are big enough for two, and employees recommend trying out the romano-crusted chicken pasta. The chicken crusted in pepper, over mostaccioli in an alfredo sauce is basic, but delicious, bartenders say. The meal will run a couple $20.
• — For $65 per couple, the pub area will offer an appetizer of stuffed portabella mushrooms, fillet with tiger shrimp in garlic butter and asparagus in hollandaise sauce. Before you go, indulge in a chocolate meringue dish. As part of the deal, split a bottle of white or red wine to go with your meal. Reservations required.
• House of Hughes — In nearby Crestwood, the House of Hughes has an entire Valentine's Day menu, including items like a three-cheese lasagna, butternut squash ravioli, chicken marsala and sauteed lake perch. Patrons can take in some live piano music as they dine. Check out the attached PDF for the full menu. 

Look for Patch Picks every Thursday at 3 p.m.