by Roberta Carwin
(07/31/02)
"Give me your foot," he whispered, patting the seat of his chair.
I slipped off one vintage rose-colored flat and stretched my leg across the space under the table. His hand curled around my instep. We smiled at each other.
It was our first date. 3 o'clock in the afternoon. We were eating creamy mushroom risotto and drinking wine: Barolo, too rich for lunch really, but the complex, aggressive taste made me feel bold, and I sensed he did too. There was none of that "should we or shouldn't we?" in the air. We both knew.
Our waiter knew too. He kept his distance, letting Michael refresh our glasses himself. But when we'd nearly finished the risotto, he appeared with a plate of something we hadn't asked for. "Compliments of the chef." It was a plate of fritto misto, delicate golden pieces of fish and shellfish. We ate them as we lingered over the last of the Barolo.
He stroked my foot some more, a little less circumspectly. By the time we left, it was getting dark and rush hour had begun. We slipped into my office, just around the corner, and made love: took turns going down on each other in my scuffed leather armchair.
Was it the rich wine, the aphrodisiac mushrooms and seafood -- or the hours we'd spent in the restaurant?
There's something very seductive about going with a lover (current or hopeful) to a special restaurant. That's why so many people stage first dates and seduction scenes at upscale dining establishments. You're intimately together, but you're not alone; you're being watched, and you're not. (Our waiter that afternoon gave us a smile that told us he knew, without being obnoxious, and he seemed to enjoy feeding our nascent love affair -- literally and figuratively.)
A fancy restaurant meal gives you a piece of time, set aside to be together. You can't (usually) do much to each other, but you can certainly talk about what you might do later. You might be overheard -- do you care? Of course, you may also catch suggestive snippets of other lovers' conversations too. An evening in a restaurant can be great for a bit of subtle voyeurism or exhibitionism. And there's something about spending a few hours in an atmosphere of pampered extravagant privilege -- restaurant staff are always especially nice to you when they can tell you're lovers -- can really get you in the mood for a hot, exuberant encounter.
But, naturally, it's the food that's sexy too. Restaurant food is often quite naughty: richer, creamier, more indulgent in every way than you would make at home. At a place like Morton's Steakhouse, much of the food (from meat to lobsters to broccoli), offered on lavish display near the door, is wildly oversized-- a come-on to some people, I guess. Or there are more and rarer ingredients than you could ever assemble. But something simple (a gem-like piece of sushi with pink ginger; a bowl of tiny, intensely-flavored strawberries) can also tickle and caress your palate in a way that makes delightful foreplay.
Yes, it's fun to surprise your partner with food you've cooked, but it can be a different kind of delight to educate your mouths, challenge your tastes, together. In a restaurant near the Pantheon in Rome, the waiter described that evening's special; carpaccio of thinly-sliced raw salmon. The word "crudo" alarmed my date; he barely agreed to try it. The look on his face, as the almost obscenely buttery texture and salty, peppery tang registered on his tongue, told me I'd be able to get him to try something different in bed, too. On the other hand, one of my most surprising evenings started in a tapas restuarant, with a guy who insisted on ordering a bizarre (to me) combination of vegetables, nuts, little smoked eels and god knows what -- which turned out to be an ambrosial meal.
While luxury and even decadence can be stimulating, a restaurant doesn't have to be very expensive to feel sexy. How about sitting in a dark wine bar, drinking very cold white wine and nibbling olives and crusty bread? Or what about that tiny neighborhood place with the best pizza, where they know you well enough to show you automatically to a corner table? What's important is that you have the time and space to concentrate on good food -- and each other.
If you want, you can take the restaurant experience a step further and play games during the meal. I've seen people suggest blindfolding your date and taking him/her to a restaurant. Do you keep the blindfold on during the meal? It would just about be possible, if you were sitting in a remote booth. Restaurant staff might be amused too. Less flamboyantly, you could agree to act out a little scene: meet at a new restaurant in the roles of, say, a dominatrix and her slave. Sitting in a Chinese restaurant, feeding your lover with chopsticks while humiliating her verbally. (Keeping your voice down will only add to the thrill; she'll have to strain to hear.) Or, more simply, take your long-term lover somewhere different. Dress in clothes you don't normally wear and pretend you're meeting for the first time.
Even without such trickery, restaurant dining is like taking a trip somewhere else. Last week, my partner and I went to Roy's, a Hawaiian-fusion restaurant -- near the shore of Lake Michigan in Chicago. Sounds incredibly precious, but it felt like three hours in Honolulu. The waiter we got -- a gorgeous young man -- understood the importance of tempting you with food -- transporting you, seducing you. He recommended shrimp tempura, crab cakes, and opakapaka: slices of pacific fish piled on top of about a dozen different vegetables, each one perfectly cooked. We put choice pieces on each other's plates, dissected the tastes: wasabi, sesame; star anise. Watching the cooks buzz eagerly around the open kitchen, we decided -- to prolong the experience -- to split a chocolate souffle. I actually moaned as the insides, liberated by a fork, flowed out like fresh lava.
Afterwards, we took a walk along the lakefront, high on Asian spices and chocolate. We talked about the time we'd made love on a Hawaiian beach and reluctantly agreed this wasn't quite the place for an encore -- too many people around for more than a makeout session. All the more exciting, then, when we finally reached the privacy of home.
