Category Archives: Bike Date

For the past two years, Dick and I have gone out to dinner every Friday night. The rules are simple: eat at a different restaurant every week and arrive by bike. If it’s raining, we grab a big umbrella and walk instead. In June Dick went in for minor surgery that kept him off the bike until last week. On Friday, we celebrated with our first Bike Date Friday in six weeks. We were both very excited.

For this special comeback dinner, we chose the Empire Tap Room in Palo Alto. We wanted to enjoy their patio before summer ended and somehow a place named Empire seemed right during the London Olympics. The ratings on Yelp were only average, but since we’ve eaten at almost everywhere in Palo Alto we took a chance.

Dick met me at the Caltrain station in Mountain View and we rode the seven miles to Palo Alto together, pedaling hard to make our reservation. I always forget to add extra time to account for the strong headwind you face riding up the Peninsula on a summer evening.

We arrived just a few minutes late for our reservation and quickly relaxed at out table on the patio. The cocktails, appetizers, entree, dessert and ambiance were all very good. I don’t know what the reviewers were expecting. But the relaxed ride home in the fading light was priceless. Walking home after a date is romantic, but not as romantic as a twilight cruise on our bikes after an exceptional dinner out.

What would you miss most if you couldn’t ride your bike? Where would you go first once you were back on it?

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About Bike Date Friday: Since September 2010, my husband and I have had a standing date every Friday night. We eat at a different place every week and arrive by bike. There’s no better way to end the work week.

When I accepted my new job based in San Jose, over 10 miles from home, I didn’t know whether our Friday night bike dates would work. There are some good restaurants in downtown San Jose, but most of the routes home cross suburban style office parks and industrial areas with higher speed traffic. Hardly romantic. But after I shifted my commute to a combined bike + train ride, the opportunities opened right up. By putting the Caltrain in the mix, Dick and I can go out anywhere between San Jose and San Francisco.

I got the idea for our first San Jose bike date as I rode up the Guadalupe River Trail on my way to work. The big blue and yellow tents under the Taylor Street Bridge could only mean one thing: Cirque du Soliel was back in town! A couple of mouse clicks later back at my desk and we were set for the 8 o’clock Friday night show.

On show night I met Dick at the train station and we rode to San Pedro Square to grab a bite before the show. Vaguely reminiscent of Murphy Avenue in Sunnyvale, San Pedro Square is a one-block historic district that was spared from urban development and now is primarily a restaurant row.

We made a quick decision, locked the bikes on a nearby bike rack, and got a table at San Pedro Bistro & Wine just in time to beat the crowd that soon developed in this relatively small restaurant. The food was better than average and we enjoyed a leisurely meal, neither rushed by the clock nor our server. Then it was back on the bikes and up the Guadalupe River Trail a couple of miles to the Cirque du Soliel big top.

We rolled past the expected line of cars waiting for parking and up to the gate, where I asked the attendant how to get to the bike rack I had seen when we rode past. “That bike rack is for employees only. We don’t have bike parking for attendees,” he said. “Then where can we park?,” we asked. He radioed in to ask the manager, then said we could lock up on the fence outside the gate. He assured us he would be standing nearby all night and would keep an eye on them. A kind gesture.

The show was everything I had come to expect from many years of Cirque du Soliel shows: athleticism, grace, drama and lyricism. What I didn’t expect was that the show ran over 2 1/2 hours with a 30 minute intermission. Their “Love” show we saw in Las Vegas ran only 90 minutes. With the last train leaving San Jose at 10:30 we had a tough decision: stay for the whole show or ride the 13 miles home late at night.

We wavered. Dick was tired from a hilly 50+ mile ride earlier that day, so we should take the train. But we’d miss the grand finale and the ride home is flat, so we should ride. When time came to leave for the train, Dick whispered: “Let’s ride.” So we did, rolling out past the pedicabs ferrying people back to their cars, over the Taylor Street Bridge, and into the dark.

The most direct route home was El Camino Real, a six lane road that serves as the commercial and retail backbone of the Peninsula. Definitely not a route to take during business hours. But after everything is closed and the wide parking lane is empty, it was surprisingly mellow. So mellow that we ended up taking El Camino the whole way up to Mountain View even after we could have turned off and ridden neighborhood streets. An hour later we were home, warm and safe in our beds just before midnight.

Have you ever been completely surprised how safe a seemingly scary bike route can be? Is there a route that you take only on the off-off hours?

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About Bike Date Friday: Since September 2010, my husband and I have had a standing date every Friday night. We eat at a different place every week and arrive by bike. There’s no better way to end the work week.

I’ve never been one to clip coupons, even back in the day when I lived in a studio apartment and had to save for three months to buy my first microwave oven. Ditto for waking up early for day after Thanksgiving sales and being the seventh caller to radio stations for concert tickets. And when my friends and co-workers would swap stories about the daily deals they had bought on Groupon, I had no interest in signing up.

But when I saw that Dine About Town was returning this year, my mouth started watering. During the two short weeks of Dine About Town, the finest San Francisco restaurants offer prix fixe meals at a bargain $17.95 for a two-course lunch and $34.95 for a three-course dinner. Over 100 restaurants are participating this year, including Michelin-starred Campton Place, a personal favorite. It was worth the train ride to the city.

I love top-tier restaurants for their service. Our waiter Paul was a “dining concierge” with insider information for a customized dining experience. “Don’t get the salad, you can have that at home. The soup is divine,” he said. “If you’re allergic to mushrooms, you can still have the soup since they go in at the end. But skip the short ribs; the glacé is made with mushrooms. Have the sea bass.” He also selected the wine flight we split: a white with a crisp crabapple nose for the soup course, and a somewhat oaky chardonnay for the sea bass.

Dick didn’t need any help selecting dessert, a chocolate cake with a scoop of raspberry sorbet. I was lucky to get a spoonful. Total bill was $73 before tip, which was a fat one per Paul’s excellent guidance. Not a cheap meal, but significantly less than what we’ve spent on bike dates at restaurants of a lower caliber.

We’ve also found deals closer to home, like a Groupon-style deal for Taverna Bistro that popped up when I was looking for a restaurant on Yelp last week: $12 for a $20 credit at the restaurant. The restaurant looked interesting anyway and I like Murphy Avenue, a quaint single block that Sunnyvale preserved when the city replaced its historic downtown with a shopping mall in the 1970s.

As the Yelp reviews indicated, the meal was quite good. And the deal was easy to redeem by giving the waitress the code from the Yelp app on my iPhone. So easy, if fact, that I’m now signed up for Groupon and LivingSocial. We’ll see where that takes us next.

Are you a deal hound or is it too much to deal with? Is there a particular type of deal you just can’t pass up?

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About Bike Date Friday: Since September 2010, my husband and I have had a standing date every Friday night. We eat at a different place every week and arrive by bike. There’s no better way to end the work week.

When the going gets tough, the tough reach for chocolate. So when an unexpected announcement at work late last week signaled a BIG UNKNOWN, it was only natural that our dinner choice for Bike Date Friday be Shokolaat, a restaurant known more for their desserts than their meals.

If you haven’t sounded out the name yet, Shokolaat is phonetic spelling for chocolate in French. We had a nice dinner followed by much nicer chocolate desserts and waited for the endorphins to kick in.

The endorphins did kick in, but I think it was more due to the relaxing ambiance of the intimate restaurant than the chocolate. Or maybe it was due to our cruise on our way home through the Old Palo Alto neighborhoods all lit up for Christmas. Outdoor lights are one of my favorite things about the holidays, more special to me than Christmas sweets and gifts.

This year, Christmas Tree Lane on Fulton Street was a disappointment since their official opening was Saturday, but their neighbors on surrounding streets made up for it with a good show. And yet, my favorites of the night were around the corner from our home in Mountain View, as Dorothy would say, in our very own backyard.

At the end of our little tour, I rolled into the garage with a small smile on my face, peace in my heart, and a feeling that everything would work out just fine.

When you’ve heard some unsettling news, what do you do to pick your mood up?

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About Bike Date Friday: Since September 2010, my husband and I have had a standing date every Friday night. We eat at a different place every week and arrive by bike. There’s no better way to end the work week.

Last Friday’s bike date was nothing to write home about. Not that the food wasn’t tasty or unique: our authentic Afghan meal of lamb and chicken kabobs and a vegetable platter of pumpkin, spinach and spicy cauliflower was exceptional, worthy of the long waiting list that formed as we ate.

The bike route to the restaurant wasn’t bad either. We took the Stevens Creek Trail, cut through two bike-only access points into Sunnyvale and then traversed the grid of an older neighborhood, approaching the restaurant from the rear. Very important since the restaurant is located in a strip mall on the bike-unfriendly El Camino Real. Given its location, I didn’t expect a bike rack, but there weren’t even any sign posts to lock up to. Just an inhospitable “no bikes on sidewalk” sign on a brick pillar. Sigh.

After the date, we wondered: why was this date so dull? After a year of weekly bike dates, has it become stale? Have we run out of places to go? Has Bike Date Friday become passé, or have we just become blasé? We’ve had other dates that didn’t turn out as expected. Where we couldn’t get a table without a long wait, where the food wasn’t that great, where we faced a rude driver on the way to the restaurant. But the date was always fun, never dull.

I think the difference is that we usually choose restaurants in walking districts, not strip malls, so there’s a lot more going on. If we don’t like the looks of the restaurant we have planned, we walk on to another. If the food is so-so, at least there was something entertaining we saw on the street. Or we could duck into another place for dessert or coffee.

I’m not going to say I won’t go back to Kabul since the food was really good and it was cool to see large extended Afghan families gather for a meal. But I will say it won’t be a bike date, and it may only be take-out.

How important is ambiance when you choose a restaurant? Or is it just about the food?

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About Bike Date Friday: Since September 2010, my husband and I have had a standing date every Friday night. We eat at a different place every week and arrive by bike. There’s no better way to end the work week.

For the past three years I’ve worked at a company with a headquarters in Paris. It sounds much more romantic than it is. I’ve only visited the Paris office once and due to company politics it was a miserable experience. But next month I’ll be headed back under much better circumstances, especially since Dick will join me at the end of the trip for some vacation time.

What better way to get excited about our trip than sampling French cuisine on a bike date? On Friday night, we pedaled through the old neighborhoods of Palo Alto up to Left Bank in Menlo Park. Left Bank has a small bar that’s very popular with the after work crowd, but I prefer the spacious dining room that manages to feel calm even when the restaurant is busy. And you can still get all the tasty vintage cocktails.

After the cocktails we shared a pâté de foie gras plate and green salad, then moved on to the main course. Dick ordered a Couscous with Lamb Stew that was artfully served up at the table. I went for the Canard aux Pommes, duck breast with apples. For dessert: chocolate mousse and coffee. All very tasty, making us glad we chose Left Bank for an elegant dinner to help us unwind after a busy work week.

But you don’t have to go high-end to experience French food on the Peninsula, there are several small cafés and bistros serving more modest fare. Like Bistro Maxine, a crêperie where we ate before a dinner-and-a-movie bike date last month. To say that Bistro Maxine is petite would be an understatement. Inside, there are four tables seating a dozen people and two cafe tables on the sidewalk serving four. So don’t try to book a table there for a rehearsal dinner or a going away luncheon.

The menu is simple: sweet and savory crêpes, soup, salad and house wines. After soup, crêpes and people-watching from our sidewalk table, we were fully satisfied.

Afterward, we walked over to the Aquarius Theater to see “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen. Now that got us excited for Paris. The romantic one, not the work one.

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About Bike Date Friday: Since September 2010, my husband and I have had a standing date every Friday night. We eat at a different place every week and arrive by bike. There’s no better way to end the work week.