An Evening in Inverness

I haven’t done a restaurant review in a way long time.

I need to make up for it.

So today I’m writing about a whole town on a Friday night

okay, maybe not the whole town,

just parts of it.

Inverness

Which I’ve been to many times.  It’s that town that got cut in half by that big highway.

But SO MUCH MORE!

Let’s talk about romantic evenings.

Somewhere, somehow, someone mentioned that McCleod House Bistro was the best restaurant in Citrus County.  When we found out that our local favorite place in Crystal River for special dinners was closed for remodeling we were like, well, okay, we might as well try a new place….

Made reservations and they asked if we were celebrating anything special, oh yeah, it was our anniversary and Terry’s birthday.

And this was our menu:

In case you can’t see it…..

Okay, we’ve dined all over the country at many different places for our anniversary, and this was a first.  Maybe that’s what restaurants are doing now! Since we only have an anniversary and birthday together once a year, how would we know????

And here I am having some Cakebread Cellars Chardonnay.  We ONLY order this on our anniversary.  Ka-ching. 

And our dinner…

We both ordered the specials, Terry’s is the red meat variety.

Service was extraordinary and the food was excellent.

We opted for no dessert but they brought us key lime pie with a lit candle for Terry’s b’day.

OH geeeeez, now we have a new favorite local anniversary restaurant.  What are we going to do when our other favorite local anniversary restaurant reopens????

As we left the restaurant, Inverness city manager Frank DiGiovanni was dining on the porch and gave us a wave.  Yes, he has no idea who we are, we either looked really important in our special going out to eat at a special place clothes or he just waves at anyone and everyone.  So everything we read in the paper that makes us think he is a cold hearted politician is all WRONG!!!!! He’s our new BFF. I know if we had just gone over to his table we could have shared a nice glass of Cabernet.

But anyhow let’s move on, we could hear a classic rock band playing around the corner which sounded like fun, but we had a destination. We were headed to Fox Den Winery for one last sip of wine.  (Okay, I use “we” loosely, I was drinking most of the wine!)

Not only was there a band playing, but there were a whole lot of people hanging out on the streets of Inverness.  And they didn’t look homeless.  There were no special events scheduled so I was surprised that Inverness was so busy on a Friday evening.

Fox Den Winery had several tables filled but there was room at the bar for us.  The owners remembered us and we had only been there one other time. (Is that a good thing or a bad thing?)

I told the owner that we just had an anniversary dinner and a lovely bottle of Cakebread Cellars Chardonnay.  And she said, oh you had dinner at McLeod’s House Bistro!

We enjoyed listening to the acoustic duo that was performing.

Next we headed over to the Valerie Theatre so we could see it lit up at night.

I took lots of pictures, but I either had the wrong lens filter on or was using the wrong setting.  Or had too much wine. (Good thing that I wasn’t driving!)  The snaps didn’t turn out all that well.

Gosh, I love sparkle lights and shiny fountains.  It was a great evening, the weather was perfect,  Think we will be returning to Inverness for another romantic evening. Soon.