Evil Red Holiday

After a multitude of negative experiences I took to referring to Valentine’s Day as the ‘Evil Red Holiday’  Brian was greatly amused by this and took to referring to it as such himself.  For our first Valentine’s Day together way back in 1998 he made the mistake of asking his dad for advice as to a romantic location to take his new girlfriend.  Ben recommended La Cave, an underground restaurant located in Costa Mesa, yes, you heard right underground!

Brian was so excited to take me out for a really nice dinner and we happily went on our date.  The area was, well, getting a tad on the run down side, not exactly what we were expecting but his dad had suggesting it so…  Once we walked in the doors there was this rickety elevator we had to take down to the lower level plastered with posters promoting some Rat Pack style lounge act performing in the restaurant on select evenings.  Luckily not on this particular evening!  When the doors opened, well, it was not exactly what we had expected.  It was to put it bluntly, a cave.  It was dark, hazy, and a little scary.  However, we were both game and continued on to our dinner.  We were seated at a huge booth and I think the restaurant had light bulbs rated maybe about 2 watts each, it was so dim I could barely see Brian’s face.

There were no menus that I recall at this place, instead the rather well-aged wait staff wheeled out these little carts with the selections available for the evening and plated your dinner right in front of you.  The carts came equipped with lights because as it was so dim you’d never be able to see the offerings otherwise.  We had some prime rib and I assume it was fine as it certainly wasn’t the food we remembered from that place.  I do remember that I have never had so much trouble eating as I did that night, squinting in the dim light desperately trying to cut up barely visible meat.  I think only the Blue Bayou at Disneyland comes close in poor lighting, and La Cave has that place beat by a mile.

We had fun though, referring to the place as the torture dungeon (there were things hung on the wall and in the light I couldn’t tell what they were, could very well have been instruments of torture for all I could tell!) before our dinner was even over.  The Brian delivered the coup de grace for me, that his dad would unscrew the light bulbs on the dates he took there back in the day to make the booth even darker.  I almost died laughing, I mean, how much darker did it need to be?  It turned out to be a great memory and we joked about it every year, remembering that first Valentine’s Day.  Most years he would ask me if I wanted him to take me there again.  He made the holiday wonderful for me from then on.  I still jokingly referred to it as the Evil Red Holiday but it hasn’t been that way for the last 16 years, Brian made sure I knew each and every year that I was loved and treasured.