Our Chocolate Dinner

Every year, the city of Fairfax hosts a Chocolate Lover's Festival right around Valentines Day and they have all kinds of activities, including a cake competition, which we entered and won last year. We were again invited to participate this year but on account of my pregnancy, trying to get the bakery open and lots of orders, we couldn't commit to doing it. In addition, we were so busy, we couldn't attend the weekend festivities. We did however, go the night before to The Sweet Life Cafe for a Death by Chocolate dinner.I wanted to do something nice for Lorne just so he would know how much I loved him so I made the reservations and didn't tell him. I even paid for it myself out of my little income I make by teaching flute.
The dinner was wonderful. It was a 3 course meal where chocolate was present in each dish. We had never been to this little cafe, but I had wanted to try it for some time. Even Jasmine was excited to try everything.Our first course was a salad that had fresh greens, strawberries, shaved dark chocolate, almonds, and a delicious balsamic dressing. I ate every last leaf on the plate (well, everything Jasmine didn't coerce out of me - I am so impressed my 3 year old loves salad).Our second course consisted of chicken and beef tenderloin with pearl onion, carrots and an unsweetened chocolate demi-glaze accompanied by homemade mashed potatoes. It was really good - the chicken was moist and perfectly cooked as was the beef. I was feeling grateful for being pregnant because I too ate every last morsel off the plate and didn't feel guilty at all!For dessert, we got a special treat. They had live music and this little group of guitar players had set up and played some great tunes while we ate our chocolate lava cake with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and drizzled with chocolate sauce. Jasmine got in on the action by dancing around and everyone thought she was very cute - including her parents. They graced us with songs such as Brown Eyed Girl and other love songs.It was such a lovely evening and we left stuffed to the gills. I think I would like to go back and try some of their regular menu items since the food we had there was so good and we also found out that they make their own ice cream there.