Sometimes because of this blog I get invited to soft openings of new restaurants and I get to write about them. And sometimes a friend of mine is invited and then invites me and it inspires a blog post. This is about the second type of invite.
My Orangetheory friend Lindsay texted me the other night asking if I was free and could meet her in West Hollywood in 30 minutes. She had gotten an invite to the soft opening of The Henry and her boyfriend couldn’t make it and she wanted to know if I was free. She apologized for it being so last minute, but since I was free it was fine and I quickly got dressed and got in my car.
I wasn’t familiar with The Henry, but it turns out that the restaurant has locations in Arizona (when Lindsay is from) and they also own North Italia which is an amazing restaurant that has a location in Santa Monica where I recently had a date. Lindsay was so excited to get to go The Henry and once I took a look at the menu I was pretty excited too. I got there right on time for her reservation and we went inside. It was a bit crowded and people were taking a bit longer enjoying their dinners than I think the staff expected so it was a long wait for a table. But there were 2 seats at the bar left so we grabbed those.
Since this was the soft opening, the meal was complimentary. We were given the full menu as well as the rules for ordering that night.
We each got to pick an entree and we split an appetizer and dessert. That seemed like a good plan to me (I probably would have done that even without the rules) and we had a pretty similar plan on what we wanted. We got the truffle fondue with pretzel bread to start, we both got steak dishes as our entrees (I had the NY strip), and we got a chocolate peanut butter thing for dessert.
Everything was delicious and I was so full at the end of the meal! Also included with the soft opening menu were drinks! Normally alcoholic drinks aren’t included in those sort of things, so it was pretty special that it was. I’m not a big drinker (my last drink was back at my birthday party), but I figured I should at least try one of their drinks. Since it was free, it didn’t matter if I didn’t finish it. So I decided to try a drink with vodka and berries. It was really good and I drank more of it than I expected to!
But of course, with any meal out, the highlight was getting to hang out with a friend. Lindsay and I used to see each other pretty much every week at Orangetheory. But we haven’t been working out together for a long time. So we have made an effort to stay in touch and we try to get together from time to time. We had dinner together a few months ago so to see each other again was nice. Sometimes it can be way longer between seeing each other so I was grateful that I was able to join her for dinner (although I did feel bad that her boyfriend had to be sick so I could be her plus one).
Our conversation was just catching up on lot of randomness. She wanted to hear funny stories from online dating and she was telling me fun stories about her work. And we shared updates about people we both know from Orangetheory. Some people are still people I work out with and others are people that she knows from social media and was able to update me about. We kept getting distracted by how good the food was, but we had a pretty lively conversation too.
We were there for a few hours and then I had to get back to my car to head home. But I really could have spent more time there to hang out more with Lindsay and to maybe try another drink. I know I’ll have to go back to The Henry once they are open (which is this weekend) to try more of the entrees. Plus, they are supposed to have an incredible brunch and I love finding new brunch places!
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