Date Night Lamb Chops

The day after we had our first baby, a friend with kids visited us in the hospital to meet the new addition. He held Phoebe, we took some pictures, and before he left, he delivered some advice: “Make sure to get a date night every once in a while,” he said. “Alone time is important, and it can get lost.”

Lost? On us? Never!

As if to prove our point, we headed out for our first post-kid dinner six weeks later—an early-bird special in downtown Manhattan. We put our daughter to bed, handed the babysitter many pages of insane instructions, and ran out the door. But the alone time we’d carved out didn’t feel so…alone. We checked our phones. We called the sitter. We ate like cavemen and skipped dessert, telling ourselves we were too full (we weren’t). When we got home, it was still light out. Was this how it was gonna be? Like, forever?

For a while, yes. Forever, no. At some point, the clouds parted. Our one kid turned into two kids, who miraculously learned to place food into their own mouths and go to sleep without us. And so we embraced dinner out in a big, existential way. Even when the girls were finally old enough to tag along, we kept the reservation capped at two. Going to a good restaurant became the easiest way to remind us that there was a world out there beyond Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! and “Kidz” menus.

Nowadays, we do not mess around with these nights. We book the sitter within minutes of booking the reservation. We hand the girls their favorite take-out menus and tell them to make a night of it themselves. We meet at a bar for a cocktail. We wear shoes that are not waterproof. We order dessert.

Last month, we hit Lafayette, Andrew Carmellini’s new downtown brasserie, a leather-boothed place that felt like a New York institution the minute it opened its doors. We sat down for dinner at 8:30—when we used to aim to be home by—and started to feast: leaves of butter lettuce served with Roquefort and country ham; short-rib ravioli; market-fresh peas tossed with mint pesto and ricotta salata. We took particular pleasure in ordering things the kids would never allow in their airspace: buttery, sweet scallops, a pickled-blueberry sorbet. The stars of the night? Moroccan-spiced lamb chops that we could have eaten by the dozen. “Man, the kids would love these,” we said as we ate them. “We should bring them here.” On second thought, no, we shouldn’t. But if they’re lucky, we might make them at home.

This is our "Providers" column for the September issue of Bon Appetit. Head over to their site for Lafayette's Moroccan-Spiced Lamb Chops recipe. Photo by Christopher Testani for Bon Appetit.