Sage Bistro for our wedding anniversary

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Eirene, my lovely wife of 11 years yesterday morning asked where I thought we should go for our wedding anniversary meal. I immidiatly brought out the big guns: "William & Victoria? Drum & Monkey?" The text thread went quiet. An hour or two later she came back with the suggestion of "Sage Bistro I reckon looks nice xxx"

The thing that sold it for me was her "They do liver". After my hilarious quip about wanting to eat out rather than having a delivery we settled on booking us an early bird slot for sub £15 for 3 courses. With the phrase "Is a bargain ever a bargain?" rattling round my head we rocked up. In this instance - I think - yes it was.

The whole experience was full of nice touches. Upon arrival, we ordered a glass of champagne a piece and as we were settling in they brought us a  taster of a piece of tender duck on a bed of asparagus (nice touch). I ordered the best mushroom soup I've ever had for starters whilst Eirene went for the  goats cheese parcel - prepped to perfection served with a crisp salad. For main, Eirene had a very generous portion of sea bass and I had the calf liver (obviously - Eirene can't stand it so I never get to eat it at home) with bacon, onion gravy,  mash and veg which I washed down with Tempranillo .  Eirene's side of chips (not _pommes frites) _ - the kind of golden chips that you dream of when you are hungry for chips - were ace. Upon asking for some mayo - we were told "Sorry, we don't stock mayo - we like to make everything fresh - but I can ask chef to make you some" after a half hearted "oh no, don't worry" a few minutes later Eirene was presented with a ramekin of freshly made mayonnaise (nice touch).

We both opted for the vanilla mouse with passion fruit topping. These were exquisitely and aptly presented in the shape of a love heart (nice touch - pictured above.). We were assured that there was no need to rush after we'd finished the meal - and to take our time finishing our bottle of red (nice touch). We topped it all off with a couple of espresso which were presented with some hand made chocolates (nice touch).

We'd heartily recommend this off the beaten track bistro to friends - a nice simple, intimate environment lacking pretension with happy attentive staff - service as well as the food - excellent. Only downside is their website - it just crashed my browser! Here's the foursquare venue link instead.

A brilliant start to what turned into a really enjoyable evening. After eats, we went for a Long Island Ice Tea at Monteys followed by a quick look at the band playing The Blues Bar. The _Hurricanes _were playing. foot tapping 50s esque blues - coincidentally we'd just toyed with the idea of getting Hurricane cocktails in the prior bar. After that we caught up with our old friend Al, who was even older as he celebrates his birthday on the same day as our anniversary at The Regency. After darts, pints (TT Landlord)  and chats we stumbled home with big smiles about our noggins.

I think the big news of the day though has to be the Platinum - that's 70 years - wedding anniversary of Eirene's nana and grandad. Bravo.  An inspiration to us all!