The lights are low. The candles flicker. The music — Michael Bublé, perhaps — plays softly in the background. Gazing into each other’s eyes over a flower-strewn table and clinking glasses, one feels… an intense pressure to perform.
It could be the other couples, crowded together in a competitive arrangement that suggests judging relationships is a spectator sport for staff at this time of year (it is). It could be the tortured Valentine’s menu of strawberries, chocolate fondants, and hastily-sourced oysters, shucked by people who only shuck on February 14. It could be fact that the “free glass of fizz” is prosecco, and both flat and lukewarm because there’s not enough fridge space to accommodate the bulk order. Or it could just be that, in trying so hard to be romantic, the restaurant has tipped headlong into schmaltz.
