Our Valentine’s Day Prix Fixe Menu Does NOT Allow for Substitutions, Because YOU MADE A COMMITMENT TO IT 

Five Course Valentine’s Day Prix Fixe 

Welcome to Valentine’s Day at Sel de la Coeur. Though this year I have personally suffered a blindingly painful divorce, I hope you enjoy our romantic menu nevertheless.

---

Please note: There will be NO substitutions permitted.

I know what it’s like to be replaced, and I will not have my menu items disrespected in the same way.

You committed to this meal for better or for worse.

-Chef Annette

---

Cocktail

The Sparkling Violet

Our Champagne and Creme de Violette creation was made just for you, so it would be goddamn ungrateful to reject it.  Did you know I devoted nearly a quarter of my life to learning the art of mixology?  Almost as many years as I spent moonlighting as a line chef at Bugaboo Creek in my twenties, in order to support my now ex-husband as he pursued his Master’s in “The Narrative Logic of Postmodernism.” If you prefer a glass of Rosé, know that I would have preferred my husband not to leave me for my daughter’s SAT tutor. We all want things.

---

Starter

Maine Oysters

A dozen freshly shucked aphrodisiacs that will set your pheromones tingling– an experience I’ve only had in the past five years during my late night viewings of “Call Me by Your Name.”  They say inside every oyster is a pearl, but sometimes there’s no pearl, and also no diamond, or any piece of jewelry ever, unless you count a cubic zirconia engagement ring that ominously shattered two days after we eloped to the chilly shores of Kennebunkport.  Anyway, if these oysters aren’t to your liking, welcome to existence.

---

Appetizer

Single Lump-Crab-Cake

One lonely Maryland crab cake: seared to a delicate golden brown, salted with tears from my guttural sobbing. No, you may not order a second because this meal is FIXE. The two of you will just have to figure out how to equitably divide the spoils of my culinary labors. For a small extra fee, our sommelier will provide wine pairings and act as a mediator.  Try not to harbor resentment when one of you sweet-talks their way into taking it all despite never having held down so much as a TA position, let alone a job, after 20 years together.

---

Soup / Salad

Root Vegetable Salad

Artichoke hearts, hearts of palm, and heart-shaped beet carpaccio. You promised to eat this salad when you made the reservation; that’s a public covenant we take very seriously. Do these veggies go well together? They should. But going well together takes effort.  It means asking about each other’s days, planning vacations, and keeping your dick in your pants during your daughter’s SAT prep lessons.  Relationships, like beet salads, are messy. So accept the flawed but loveable food in front of you, and wipe the beet juice off your face for god’s sake.

---

or

Soup du Jour

There is no soup. Sometimes people lie, both in marital vows and on chalkboard menus.

---

Main Course

Fresh Caught Steamed Lobster

Consider the lobster, because it’s the only entrée you’ll be getting.  It’s nice to say that without having a pretentious essay collection mansplained to me again by my idiot ex.  Rather than a quick, merciful boiling, this crustacean has been simmered for hours.  You might be wondering whether the lobster felt pain, or whether it was resigned to slowly expiring in a liquidy hell.  Maybe it suffered from debilitating self-abnegation and thought to itself, “this is what I deserve.”  Regardless, the lobster has been freed of its mortal coil and I have been freed from hearing about David Foster Wallace every night as I wrote out checks to pay down his student loans. So enjoy your fucking lobster, and toss the empty shell after you’ve eaten all the meat.  Or just whenever it loses its novelty — that’s on you for failing to recognize the quality of this lobster, which deserves to be savored from tail to antennae.

---

Dessert

Bananas Foster-Wallace

A slightly green but trusting banana is paired with a hardened scoop of patronizing hipster ice cream that has grown colder over time. It almost never wants the banana to lie on top of it anymore.  The ice cream meets a hot little rum sauce and realizes it wants a topping after all — just not the banana. The sauce is not to blame, despite what that banana’s well-meaning friends say.  After many hours of therapy, the banana concludes that she and the ice cream were always destined for a split, with or without the rum sauce. The whole thing is set on fire and destroyed in a matter of seconds.  The ice cream has melted into a pool of sweet soup.  That’s right, soup.  Sometimes you have to accept that the soup you get isn’t the soup you expected. So grab a spoon, because you will not be allowed to leave until you’ve finished every last bite.