Troy McNaughtonHow to Choose a Date Cafe
June 13th 2006 19:55
What to look for:
1) A neutral location – meet in the middle unless one of you is ultra keen to do the travelling. Some people just like to drive. Just consider the cost of petrol people. You also don’t want to come across 6 people you know in the space of an hour date – yes you look popular but one can never help thinking your ‘friends’ might be paid extras.
2) Somewhere you’ve been before – don’t be responsible for choosing a crap café at random, you’ll find yourself apologising before anything between you two lovebirds has even begun. Plenty of time for apologising when you’re married and bickering.
3) Mid-range – don’t embarrass your date with somewhere out of their price range. Similarly, rarely do you get a wholly satisfactory café experience at a bottom-end budget café. Go for reasonably priced to put you both at ease and make you more likely to order multiple coffees while you keep the conversation going.
4) Ambience – arguably this consideration should be your Numero Uno. Atmosphere is everything – it can push you in or out of your comfort zone, you can be distracted where you should be paying attention, there might be too much pressure. If you don’t know this prospective chicken very well, you don’t want the most exclusive little nook in Sydney: what happens if you run out of things to say? Find somewhere good for people watching (you can always bitch about strangers at a pinch) that isn’t too noisy. Also, look for lighting of the non-fluorescent kind – if we all lived in a fluorescent world the birth rate would be zero in no time at all.
5) Service – there is nothing worse than looking over your company’s shoulder every 10 seconds in an agitated fashion because you’re famished or parched or just impatient. You don’t want a 10 step, 40 minute strategy for getting the wait staff to take your order or bring the bill, so choose somewhere they will be attentive but not too in your face. After all, you don’t need them stealing the show/your thunder/your date.
6) Food – you know it, but you still ignore it – AT YOUR PERIL! Beware of spaghetti, lettucey salads, burgers and massive sandwiches. Make sure there is a reasonable range, though, so you can both choose what your stomach butterflies like to eat. Nobody likes a vomiting date.
7) Seatage – strange but true. Avoid very straight-backed chairs or very deep cushy armchairs – you want to be able to sit comfortably as well as in an attractive fashion. I’m not going to go all finishing school on yer asses, but posture is important. More important, however, is that you feel at ease. No sense sitting on the edge of a great big beanbag because you don’t want to show off your double chin actually being comfortable.
8) Always use protection. Ok, it’s not about cafes, and we might have skipped a few steps, but it’s good advice!
Eventually I'm going to need that back...
| 88 |
| Vote |
Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
something related to ambience is the music they play at the cafe...this guy wrote an interesting post on live music in cafes...
Comment by amy
Thanks for the link, Cibby, I'll get onto it soon...
By the way, those awesome Chinese Noodles in Quay St (a la Edward's blog) are REALLY bad for dates, except that eventually someone always ends up feeding the other who can't manage their chopsticks...
Oh the games we do play!
Comment by edward
Rocky's Running Diary
Love the photo, very funny. And I get a mention in the comments; wow, cheers
Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
Chinese hot pot (fondue) on the other hand, is great for dates! Same with Korean BBQ...
Comment by amy
And Cibby, Chinese is only fast if you can USE chopsticks. Otherwise it is slow and frustrating while your food gets cold. Then someone offers to feed you =)
Top three date cafes... Yes I've been thinking about this. I'll be coming up with some kind of list sometime soon. (I never knew I was so into lists before this blog....)
Contributions very welcome!
Comment by edward
Rocky's Running Diary
But the problem with many Chinese places is that they're too quick. For a date you need to be able to linger...
Look forward to the list, not having huge amounts of cafe experience
Comment by amy
You need the right people, and also you need one of you (but preferably not both) to be very uncoordinated. This can be achieved by BYOing goon wherever it doesnt occur naturally. To my mind, that's a HUGE downfall with cafes. Almost no BYO goon allowed =(
Comment by edward
Rocky's Running Diary
Mmm good point, although most places might have a problem with BYO goon, it's kind of unwieldy.
And where exactly does goon occur naturally?