With Valentine’s Day as either the most anticipated or dreaded day of the year coming up, it’s always good to celebrate the occasion with a delicious and heart-y meal. Luckily Irvine is filled with an abundance of choices all with the expected low-lit settings, cozy seating areas, and affordable checks.
1. Panini Café
This European café is snuggly placed in a beautiful plaza just off Michelson and Jamboree Road. It is an Italian restaurant fused with a heavy Mediterranean influence. They have organic sandwiches and salads that go perfectly with their amazing meat entrees. Although their menu selection leans more onto the healthy side, their servings are so huge, just about anything will fill you up. Outside the main part of their restaurant is also an enclosed patio with red-tinted heat lamps. The best part is, this place is more than nice enough to pass as fancy, but still well within a reasonable budget.
2. Mokkoji Shabu Shabu Bar
If you and your date are craving something slightly more exotic and fun, try out this Korean hot pot joint. The restaurant setting is trendy, modern, and slightly dimmed. As the best shabu shabu restaurant for miles around, Mokkoji has the tenderest meat, the freshest vegetable selection, and top of the line service that will make your experience easy and well-worth it. If you’re a student, they have a 10% discount on Yelp from 5:00-6:30 p.m., which is not bad for an early dinner and with plenty of time to spare for a lengthy romantic evening.
3. Kabuki
Sushi may seem mainstream for some people as a Valentine’s Day dinner, but it never gets old. Conveniently, this place takes reservations, so it is relatively easy for you to plan ahead without having to sit through a long, awkward wait time with your date. The food presentation is exquisite as well as Instagram-friendly so that you and your date can document the night as you both see fit. Then after a satisfactory meal, you can walk it off at the Spectrum mall, go for a movie perhaps, grab some dessert, or even pick up a nice Valentine souvenir for your lovely date. It will be a lively and bustling night at the mall, therefore possibly ensuring a cheerful and up-beat evening.
4. Houston’s Restaurant
This is for those of you who really want to impress your date with your wallet. Houston’s is a renowned steakhouse with a spectrum of meat flavors, and with the restaurant’s classy ambience, there is nothing to hold you back from dressing up. So don’t worry about a steak restaurant being cliché, because in the end it will still turn out to be a grand evening, and maybe even something to brag about.
5. Agora Churrascaria
Speaking of fancy steak dinners, why not up your game and invite your date to an extravagant night of Brazilian barbeque? This is probably the closest you can get to a high-class, dressy, and romantic time out because Brazilian barbeque has it all. There are handsome men walking around with all-you-can-eat freshly-cooked slabs of meat dripping with sauce and exotic flavors and a truly endless salad bar that vegetarians can’t resist. “Fancy” is pretty much a mandatory dress code here, so you have the perfect excuse to go all out with looks. There is no need to drive to LA anymore for Brazilian barbeque, because luckily Irvine really does have it all.
When it comes to enjoying food though, truthfully you don’t even need a romantic date, because even a couple of friends will make your night a fun one. That being said, don’t hesitate to try out anything from this list and enjoy your night with some loving company because Valentine’s Day is a night that shouldn’t be spent alone.