by Hoyt Nelson
1. The Tonga Room and Hurricane Bar in the basement of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco (top of Nob Hill at 950 Mason, 800-257-7544). It was converted from a hotel swimming pool in the 1940s and it’s unique, but expensive. It’s dark and Tiki style with tables around the pool and a small dance floor with large overhanging fig trees at the end next to the bar. There’s a $10 cover charge and make sure to get your hand stamped if you go to the bathrooms. Even so, it gets crowded and loud, so go early unless you enjoy a crowd. Every half hour or so, there’s recorded thunder and flashes of lightning. Then a perforated pipe around the edge of the pool showers the pool with a five minute rain storm. When this is over, The Island Groove Band is pulled out on a float to the middle of the pool and the music begins. The Mai Tais ($10) are the thing here. It’s possible to get food, but the last time I ate there, it was not memorable. Go on the net for hours and other details and good luck finding a parking place nearby. I suggest the train to San Francisco and Uber to the place.
2. Shadowbrook in Capitola at 1750 Wharf Rd. It’s the most romantic place in California, if not the entire west Coast which I’ve had the pleasure to visit. Go up the hill from the only bridge in town to a large parking lot on the right. Follow a zigzag stone path down the steep slope past gardens to a rambling 5 level old building among the trees with rooms scattered helter skelter. There is one large-ish dining room and several cozy smaller dark dining nooks tucked in the middle of a stairways and elsewhere. The food is fairly expensive traditional American, but VERY good. And reservations at least one week in advance are a must. Not sure if they still do this, but if you dined there on the documented exact day of your birth, you get a free birthday cupcake. At the bottom of the hill, there is a terrace a few feet from the river where you can enjoy a drink while waiting to be seated. When you exit the building, take the small funicular back up to the parking lot and back to reality. The only possible further embellishment would be to go after seeing the beautiful yearly Begonia festival when about 10 floats decorated with said begonias float down the river and under the aforementioned bridge. Sadly, this festival ended its long run last year when the source of the water for the begonias dried up. However, you can still walk along the magical path by which the decorated floats passed. Nearly all of the quaint bungalows along the San Lorenzo River will make you wish you could live in this paradise. To do this, go back down to the bridge and follow the path next to it up the river as far as you can. Parking in town is usually a problem, but drive over the bridge and up the hill for lots of timed parking. There are also a couple of other designated paid lots in town.
3. Bistro Roux (was Fi-Fi’s) at 1188 Forest Ave, Pacific Grove 831-372-5325 was an authentic French Bistro. The décor, the wait staff, the food, everything was what you would expect in Paris and the price was amazingly low for the prix fix weekend dinners. For those who fondly remember this gem, it now has the same chef and wait staff (for a while) but a new owner. Although there are still some great Yelp reviews, there are too many bad reviews for me to recommend it any more until I check it out.
4. Mon Ami Gabi on the strip at Paris, Las Vegas next to the sidewalk 702-944-4224 is another place for true French upscale food and atmosphere. There is inside dining as well. Everything is first class and expensive (but no more than many places in this town). The only potential barrier is getting there if your hotel is not in easy walking distance in the typical Las Vegas heat. Many places serve scallops, which are actually stamped out circles of skate wings, but Mon Ami proudly calls a spade a spade and shows how the French are known for exquisite meals made with lesser materials. Do not forget a side order of pommes frites.
5. The Supatra River House in Bangkok is probably the very most romantic restaurant ever for me. It’s out of range of Yelp, but the Lonely Planet Guide book talks about it, or just Google it. The converted home has been awarded as having one of the best Thai cuisines in the country and the view over the Grand Palace and Rama 9 Bridge are not to be missed. Get started just before dark for the best experience and so that you can more easily find the place. From the boat landing near the north end of the Royal Palace grounds, take the ultra cheap commuter ferry across the Chao Phraya river and walk R along unlit gravel streets (when I visited it in 2005), as close as possible to the river on the other side. Within a few hundred feet, you will find a dimly-lit restaurant with rickety stairs up to the roof dining area, which is within 30 feet of the water. It’s dimly lit with strings of Christmas-style lights. Tasteful Thai decorations can just be seen in the semi-darkness. There are always lots of boats going back and forth on the river and some tourist boats are lit with more strings of lights. The ultimate experience would be to do this during the Loi Krathong festival in late fall. During this time, people buy (or make) little decorated floats with lights on them on which they symbolically put all their troubles and bad thoughts and float them away down the river. Lots of boys will sell you one of these, and if you watch carefully down stream, other boys can be seen with long hooked poles with which they retrieve your float to sell to the next sinner. This restaurant has just reopened after renovation, so I can’t guarantee the same experience, but the owners would be crazy to change the atmosphere (except the prices).
Editor’s Note: Hoyt claims that these restaurants are the “most romantic” that he has ever visited, and not necessarily the most romantic in the world!
