A Decadent day for £100…(ish)

On Saturday, I cashed in my Christmas present (yes it took me 7months) and himself wined and dined me to the max, only going slightly over our Crimbo budget too!

To begin our day, we went to the matinee performance of “Once“, we dropped into the Phoenix Theatre to get our tickets which we’d booked via the lovely people at ATG, we had great seats in the stalls, row E!

We arrived a little early, so we hopped in across the road to the The Montagu Pyke (a Wetherspoons) for a drink

Once we returned to the theatre, we headed straight to our seats and were greeted with a functional bar up on stage – so up we trundled!

There were mirrors in old school frames and lights lining the walls of the set, I loved the whole look

http://instagram.com/p/q9qFQ2rgQK/?modal=true

We were pretty delighted with our souvenir cups too – we ended up taking four home!

Also surrounding the walls were lots and lots of instruments and I must say, I was very impressed with the audience because everyone looked, but nobody touched!

I’ve had the pleasure of visiting lots of different theatres, not only when seeing shows but also while auditioning for and acting in them, but I’d never been to the Phoenix Theatre before, like so many West End theatres, the architecture and decoration is just stunning

After we’d retaken our seats, some of the cast came onto the stage and began a good oul Irish sing-song, himself knew every word of every folk song song (apart from the Czech ones obviously!!)

We absolutely loved the entire show, it was wonderful, a real love letter to Dublin, I for one came away feeling very proud to be an Irish lass as well as a wee bit homesick! The sheer talent on stage is to be marvelled.

We headed home for a sprucing up and then made our way to our dinner reservation

Himself did a fair amount of research into where to take me to dinner bless him, he wanted to take me somewhere über fancy, however, as I don’t eat all that much seafood, this greatly narrowed down his options!!

We arrived at The Bentley hotel and goodness me is it swish! As we were a smidge early for our reservation, we had a look around and had a sit in the plush cocktail bar where I took full advantage of sitting smack dab in the centre of the party booth

The decor in this place is just gorgeous, in the restaurant itself beautiful chandeliers hung from the ceiling and a most impressive mosaic floor took centre stage

Without knowing, we’d stumbled in as “Top table” guests which meant we would be getting three courses each with a complimentary glass of champagne – we didn’t argue, this sounded good to us!

With classical music playing and such friendly staff floating about, the ambiance was wonderful. We were brought fresh, warm rolls to munch on while we ordered. I went for the mozzarella and tomato salad with pesto and balsamic vinegar dressing and himself had their vegetable soup (soup of the day), both VERY tasty

We both opted for the breast of chicken wrapped in bacon with spinach, mashed potato and a red wine gravy reduction for our main. It was so good and the waiter came straight over to offer some ground pepper – which I was all for! The mashed potato was super soft, really, the whole dish was excellent

Last but by no means least, our desserts, his was the cheesecake and mine was crème brûlée = nomnomnom!

We were offered tea and coffee but as we were fantastically full and ready to make our way home (and fierce grateful that we’d opted for a food-light day so that we were able to enjoy the entire meal) we declined!

The only sad part about the Peridot at The Bentley Hotel is that no one seems to know about it, so it had very few tables to serve during our time there. It’s a fantastic restaurant full to the brim with class and sophistication, kind and attentive staff and mega hats off to the Chef too. If you have an event coming up and you’d like to celebrate, I urge you to take a chance on the Peridot, you’ll be so glad you did, we had a wonderful time and will be recommending it to everyone!

The pièce de résistance? Oh well that ladies and gents would be the bill – £67 and it would’ve been £50 save the fact that himself left the two complimentary glasses of champagne to me (isn’t he nice?!) and he ordered a couple of beers instead. I literally could not believe it, for what you get, if we’d been handed a bill for £150 we would’ve thought “ah fair enough”. Honestly, go!

Now, onto the maths bit!

Tickets for two to see Once = £44 (including booking fee)

Two drinks each at the show = £27

Dinner in Peridot at The Bentley Hotel = £67

Total = £138

But, if you skip the two drinks each at the show and stick to a glass of champagne each over dinner, you can do our date day for the sum total of £94

Can’t say fairer than that now can you? Let me know in the comments below of any amazing restaurants you’ve found that people need to know about!

Theatre outfit: Dress H&M gone, but similar here and really cute here | Wedges L.K. Bennett | Short grey cardigan, old | Bag Michael Kors

Restaurant outfit: Dress Oasis | Heels L.K. Bennett

Rxx