Mr Al Young Dot Com

Last week we went back to the Lark Creek Steak House in San Francisco for Dine about Town. You may remember that I wrote about my dinner there back in January. Yes I know Dine about Town is an opportunity to try new restaurants and I have already tried the Lark Creek Steak House only 6 months ago. There are several reasons why I decided to go back to the same restaurant again.

1. Dine about Town is normally the full month of January giving us a chance to use the whole month to make plans and decide which restaurant to try. This year Dine about Town is broken up with two weeks in January and two weeks in June. That does not give you much time to plan and set up dinner plans.
2. I enjoyed our last meal meal at the Lark Creek Steak House and I did not see any other restaurants I was dying to try.

So instead of spreading out some dinners with various groups of friends over the full month, we quickly decided on a restaurant and made plans with 3 other couples. This was our largest Dine about Town outing yet. June is a very busy month for anyone with kids and we have a combined 10 kids among us. So it was a small miracle that we were able to find a date and babysitting for all our children on fairly short notice.

I don’t have any new pictures of our meal. You can see pictures here of the last time I was there. We had essentially the same meal and it was still outstanding although the prices on a few items went up. The other reason I don’t have any new photos is that one of my dinner companions cited a concern over her their privacy in appearing on my blog. OK, most people seem excited to be featured on my blog, but certainly I will honor your wish to remain anonymous. However you must remember that having a blog is like having a reality TV show. If you interact with me chances are you will be blog material sooner or later directly or indirectly. So if you have a real need for privacy I can either put a black bar over your face, use only your initials, have you sign a waiver or I guess you can just tell me you don’t want to be featured on my Blog. My anonymous dinner companion has already done that but if anyone else has a problem with privacy let me know.

Our dinner was a lot of fun. As parents it is always nice to have an evening out without kids and everyone always enjoys a good meal among good friends. Unlike my dinners with my old friends the Dine about dinners have a different dynamics. Usually we go out with “my” friends and “her” friends on separate occasions. In a marriage there are always friends of our spouse that we may not otherwise interact with. We may not care for the husband of our wife’s friend or just find that we have not much in common. Still we put up with these people for the sake of our spouse and it is usually not so bad. It is easier if you have kids. If you don’t want to interact with the other couple just go check on your kids until its time to go home.

Still it is nice to be able to find a group of friends that can be considered “our” friends and we can both enjoy the company. With this group of four couples I think we are as close to having  a group of “our” friends as possible. We share many things in common with these three other couples. We are all about the same age and are at the stage of life. With each of us having young kids we also share the same joys and struggles of raising kids. Our relationships with one another go back many years starting as single people to now a married couple with kids. I guess some of these people could still be considered more “her” friends and some more “my” friends but the line between “his” and “her” friendships are becoming less clear with each passing year. While I do not have the same relationship with my wife’s friends, we still have a relationship and history that goes way back. Some people I have know nearly as long but of course in a different way.

A fine meal with no kids is always a treat, but to be able share the experience with a group of close friends makes the dining experience that much more enjoyable. We feel blessed to have a group of special friends in our lives that we can both share and enjoy our lives with. I look forward to our next dining outing even if the food is not quite as good. Not often… but sometimes the dining is not just about the food.