This weekend was date night with dinner out and a show at the Hippodrome. Since it was the weekend before Valentines day we decided to just roll it into this weekend too. For dinner I picked the restaurant out which is how we ended up at Flemmings. I didn’t realize at the time that the place is part of a chain and that it is primarily a steak house. I just liked their website and they had listed prime rib which I had been craving since we were home in Hawaii when I didn’t get any. Getting to the place was kind of a pain since we had to go through the inner harbor and traffic there was pretty bad. Once we got to the place we valeted the car so we wouldn’t have to deal with trying to find a parking space. The only odd thing was that you paid for the valet when you dropped it off instead of when you picked it up.

Once we were inside Flemmings I was pleased by the decor and ambiance. It was surprisingly busy since we were there at 6PM which is a little early for the dinner rush. We got seated immediately and were presented with our menus. The menus were kind of cumbersome since you had a large bulky regular menu, a specialty drink book, a reserve wine list, a prefix winter menu, and a restaurant week prefix menu. This combination of 5 separate menus to look at was kind of intimidating and made the table feel cluttered and chaotic. We started off with two martini’s from the bar which were awesome. I got something called the Tropical Martini which was coconut flavored and Nicole had a Pink Lady. Both were shaken and poured at the table which was neat. For dinner I ended up ordering the restaurant week prefix menu since it had prime rib as one of the options. Nicole got the petite fillet imperial which was one of the daily specials that our waitress told us about. When my prime rib came I wasn’t really impressed with it. It came with these 3 sauces to dip the meat into but I was disappointed since the meat itself didn’t have much flavor. Nicole’s steak arrived and she thought the meat was very good but she was a little disappointed that the crab meat imperial was basically just some lump crab meat piled on top without any preparation.

The salads and entrees were kinda slow in coming out which meant that it got to 7:30 and we still hadn’t ordered/gotten the dessert that was part of my meal. When i got our waitresses attention I told her that we needed to be out of there in 10 minutes and she said it was no problem that should would box up my cheescake and bring us the check. Unfortunately when the check arrived it had an extra ($10) drink on the bill which we didn’t have but since we were in a rush I just paid for it so we could get out of there so we could make it to our show. Once we got our car back from the valet and were leaving the place we realized that the ‘cheesecake’ that she had brought out in a bag for us was actually someone else’s leftovers (gross). As a result I didn’t like the place as we ended on a couple of bad notes and doubt I’d ever go back to the place. More importantly though I don’t think I like steak houses as I find the value just isn’t there (I can do as good if not better steak at home for 10% of the cost).

Since we got a late exit from Flemmings we were in a bit of a rush to try and make it to the play on time. Unfortunately we ran into a massive traffic jam trying to get the 2 miles from the restaurant to the Hippodrome. When we finally got up to the parking garage we usually park at it was closed. I didn’t think anything of it since we were almost 10 min late so we ended up driving around the block and managed to luck out and find some street parking. I was a little wary about the street parking since it was a pay to park place but the meters weren’t accepting any money. So I was little stressed out about the car/ticket during the show. Turns out that its only pay to park till 8PM which i thought was a little odd.

We make it to the show at least 10 minutes late and we can hear the performance has already started. Thankfully the Hippdrome let us in without any problems. Once we got into the theater we were really surprised since it was mostly full. We actually managed to get seated before the first big musical number started. The show itself was fantastic and we really enjoyed all the singing. One thing that was surprising to me was how different the play was from Grease the movie with John Travolta. There were a lot of little differences that kind of caught me off guard since the movie was based on the play. Still we had a great time and enjoyed the show. We figured out that the reason the show as probably so busy was because Taylor Hicks the American Idol singer had a number in the show. It was kinda neat to hear him but i didn’t think he added anything to the show but it definitely worked as a way to fill the theater.

Still we had a pretty good night and definetly enjoyed our show. It was a pretty good way to celebrate Valentines day out.

Us at the Chorus Line

Last night we went to the Chorus Line at the Hippodrome theater. It was a show that is a part of our subscription we bought for the year. Unfortunately when it was time to go for our show it was snowing outside. It was a really light snow but it was the first snow of the year so I was kinda concerned. Especially since as we were leaving columbia road was closed in one direction. I think the city was caught flat footed because there was no salt on the road and a lot of the bridges and overpasses were in danger of icing over. Thankfully it wasn’t too bad going in and it was clear by the time we went home.

Nicole was craving Indian food so instead of going out for a fancier dinner we went to the Indian restaurant Kumari on North Charles St. Nicole had been there before with her lab and is a favorite of Abbie and Cale’s. I thought the food was really good and the service was fantastic. Thankfully our waiter warned us that one of the things we initially ordered was very spicy so we changed the order and were very happy with his lamb recommendation.

Walkin in the snow

The show itself was very good. I can see why it lasted so long on Broadway. At first we were a little disappointed since there was no intermission so we thought it was going to be a short show. It ended up being over 2 hours long which was great. Again the theater was pretty empty which probably isn’t good news for the theater business. I was surprised at how minimal the set was for the show I really enjoyed it. The cast was fantastic and their singing was a lot of fun.

The only low point of the evening was the other audience members. It amazed me at how rude Baltimore people could be. The woman sitting next to nicole had her coat half on nicole and then couldn’t sit still during the entire performance and kept shifting around. Her husband wasn’t any better as he seemed incapable of whispering to the person next to them since I could hear him talking during the show even though i was 3 seats removed from him. Also people 2 rows in front of us left in the middle of the last number instead of sitting still and waiting to the end of the show like any other reasonable person.

Ross at Kumari

Self picture at the Hippodrome

In the lobby

Just before we went to our seats

Some of the pictures are a little blurry because we were having problems with our new camera (more in another post).

So this weekend was the first night of our Baltimore Hippodrome theater subscription. Nicole picked out a restaurant called ‘Pazo’ for our preshow dinner. It’s a tapas restaurant down in fells point. In our effort to make sure we didn’t miss our show time we had an early reservation at 5:30 with the early birds . Pazo’s is in a converted warehouse but the atmosphere was very intimate and very hip. You could definitely see that it was a place that is very busy on a saturday night and would be perfect to come with a group for food before a night out on the town. Nicole thought the big table they had on one side of the restaurant looked like something out of sex in the city.

The food was very good and we particularly liked the scallops and empanada dishes. The scallops were perfectly cooked which is so hard to do and easy to turn into rubber. Although the food was great the service there was really what set the place apart. The workers there were definitely a team and worked together well keeping our water topped off and removing plates as we emptied them. We had multiple people besides our waiter asking us if we needed anything and how things were. I’m not sure if that was an artifact of being there so early at first when the restaurant wasn’t full yet.

Although we should have had tons of time to make it to the hippodrome we lingered over dinner so long that we ended up arriving at the theater with only 15 min till show time. We were kinda surprised how many empty seats were left in the theater. The show was Legally Blonde which I guess was based off of the movie. The show ended up being a lot of fun. It might not have been the most complex or though provoking but it was very enjoyable. We both got a good laugh out of the show and enjoyed the singing and dancing. The first half of the show was better than the second half but overall I thought the actors did a good job. Of course the show stealers were the two dogs they had that were part of the cast. They did a good job using them in the show and were a hit with the audience.

The only sour note of the whole night was on our trip home when I95 was closed and we got stuck trying to get home.

Nicole with her drink at Pazo’s before the show.

Ross with some of our dinner.

Us at Legally Blonde during the intermission.

Nicole looking out at the view from the parking lot after the show.