Valentine’s Day 2011 Around Mobile: Special Dinners and a Weekend of Love Songs

With Valentine’s Day falling on a Monday in 2011, Mobile restaurants and venues spread the romance across an entire weekend — from multi-course dinners to free recitals and a pops-style symphony program.

When the calendar puts the holiday at the start of a workweek, celebrations tend to stretch rather than shrink. Couples who cannot commit a Monday evening to a three-hour dinner simply move the observance to Saturday or Sunday, and restaurants and venues respond by offering their special programming across multiple nights. That was the shape of Valentine’s 2011 in Mobile: a Friday-through-Monday run of special dinners, teas, recitals and concerts that gave the Port City more ways than usual to mark the day.

The holiday is reliably one of the busiest dining nights of the year for local restaurants, second only to Mother’s Day in many kitchens, and Mobile’s dining rooms planned accordingly. Fixed-price, multi-course menus became the standard format — they let kitchens serve a full house efficiently while giving diners a curated experience, and they encouraged reservations that helped restaurants predict and staff the rush.

Riverview Plaza’s holiday menu

The Riverview Plaza Hotel planned a Valentine’s dinner from 6 to 9 p.m. on Feb. 14 at $50-plus per person. The menu offered three courses plus dessert with a Bosc pear sorbet intermezzo between the second and third course, four entrée options and multiple choices at every stage — reservations suggested at 251-415-0124.

The downtown hotel’s holiday dinner carried the imprimatur of one of Mobile’s most familiar landmarks. The Riverview Plaza, rising over the Mobile River and the city skyline, has long been a center of the city’s banquets and celebrations, and its Valentine’s dinner was pitched at couples who wanted the full formal treatment on the holiday itself — the Monday crowd who wanted the traditional date night despite the workweek.

The menu’s structure was classic banquet romance. A sorbet intermezzo — in this case Bosc pear, a variety prized for its sweet, spice-tinged flesh — served as a palate cleanser between the second and third course, a fine-dining touch that signaled the kitchen was aiming higher than a standard holiday buffet. With four entrée options and choices at every stage, the dinner also avoided the common fixed-menu trap of forcing every couple into identical plates. Diners who wanted the full experience were advised to reserve ahead at the hotel’s line, since holiday seatings at that price point tend to fill early.

NoJa’s four-course tasting

NoJa put together a four-course Valentine’s dinner at $58-plus per person, with one option each for the first two courses, three entrées and two desserts. Reservations were strongly advised: 251-433-0377.

For couples seeking something more intimate, NoJa has long occupied a special place in Mobile’s dining scene. Tucked into a historic house in the city center, the restaurant built its reputation on Mediterranean- and Asian-influenced cuisine in a setting designed for lingering — the kind of room where a four-course dinner feels like an evening’s event rather than a meal. Its Valentine’s format reflected that identity: fewer choices in the early courses, where the kitchen could show off its strengths, and three entrée options broad enough to suit different tastes, capped by two desserts for the table’s sweet tooths.

The price, a step above the Riverview Plaza’s offering, matched the format. Tasting-style menus at this level are the restaurant world’s signature holiday product — they let a small kitchen execute a high volume of covers without sacrificing the plated-dinner quality that regulars expect, and they give the evening a built-in arc from first course to last. NoJa’s team made clear that walk-ins would be a gamble, urging couples to book ahead at the restaurant’s reservation line.

The Tea Room moves it to Saturday

The Tea Room, tucked on Old Shell Road past McGregor at Holiday Place, shifted its holiday dinner to Saturday, Feb. 12 — the shop is closed Mondays — serving a special four-course meal with a glass of champagne from 5 to 9 p.m. for $45 per person, by reservation at 251-343-4669 or online.

The shift captured the practical side of a Monday holiday. For a shop whose regular weekly schedule keeps it closed on Mondays, the sensible move was not to open for one night but to move the celebration to the Saturday before, when its dining room operates at full strength. The result was a dinner that effectively started the weekend’s celebrations two days early.

The Tea Room’s format leaned into its own strengths. A four-course meal in an afternoon-tea house is a different animal from a hotel banquet or a fine-dining tasting menu — lighter, more traditional, served in surroundings that trade skyline views for the charm of a storefront dining room in a shopping district along Old Shell Road, one of Mobile’s established commercial corridors. The included glass of champagne gave the dinner its celebratory marker, and the 5 to 9 p.m. window allowed for both early and later seatings. At $45 per person it was the most accessible of the weekend’s multi-course dinners, and the shop accepted reservations both by phone and online.

The Tea Room also poured a Valentine’s tea tray that Friday through Sunday, with last seating at 2 p.m.

That tray extended the holiday across three days for diners who preferred afternoon tea to dinner service — tiers of sweets and savories alongside the shop’s tea service, presented for the occasion. With last seating at 2 p.m., the trays functioned as a lunch-and-tea hybrid, letting grandparents, friends, and mothers-and-daughters join the celebration in addition to the couples who dominated the evening seatings. It was a reminder that Valentine’s week in Mobile is not solely a couples affair; the city’s tea rooms have long served as gathering places for the holiday’s less romantic, more sociable side.

Love songs on stage

On the holiday itself, soprano Joanie Brittingham and pianist Sharon Hudson performed “Struck By Cupid’s Arrow: A Night of Love Songs” — a program of American music in the University of Mobile’s Moorer Auditorium at 7 p.m., free of charge.

The recital gave Mobile’s classical music audience a holiday option at the most accessible price possible: nothing. Brittingham, a soprano, and Hudson, at the piano, built a program entirely from American song — the body of art song and popular standard repertoire that American composers and songwriters have produced over the last century. Free recitals of this kind are a staple of university music programs, which serve dual roles as teaching institutions and community presenters, and Moorer Auditorium on the University of Mobile campus, in the city’s western reaches, regularly hosts such events for the public.

A 7 p.m. start made the concert a complete evening in itself — early enough for couples to add dinner afterward, or to make the recital the first stop of a holiday night that cost nothing at the door. For students and faculty, it doubled as a performance opportunity; for the community, it was a rare chance to hear a dedicated program of American love songs performed live in a concert setting.

The symphony’s weekend of romance

Earlier in the weekend, the Mobile Symphony Orchestra presented “Love Is In the Air,” a concert program of love songs at the Saenger Theatre on Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m., with tickets from $15 to $55 via 251-432-7080.

The orchestra’s pops-style program anchored the weekend’s offerings with the biggest stage of them all. The Saenger Theatre, the restored 1927 movie palace on Joachim Street in downtown Mobile, has been the orchestra’s home venue, and its ornate house is a destination in itself for date-night audiences. Two performances — Saturday evening and a Sunday matinee — gave couples the choice between the classic evening out and the relaxed afternoon option, a scheduling flexibility that matches the way symphony audiences actually plan their weekends.

“Love Is In the Air” promised exactly what its title advertised: a program built around love songs, the orchestral equivalent of the weekend’s theme. Pops programs of this kind are the orchestra’s most reliable crowd-pleasers, drawing listeners who may not attend the classical subscription series but will happily spend an evening with familiar, melodic material in a grand hall. The wide ticket range, from $15 to $55, reflected the Saenger’s varied seating — affordable balcony seats within reach of students and young couples, premium orchestra-level seats for the full evening-out experience.

A weekend that worked the calendar

Taken together, the weekend’s offerings showed how Mobile’s restaurants and cultural institutions adapt to the calendar’s quirks. A Monday holiday fragments celebrations rather than concentrating them, and the local response was to spread programming across four days — Saturday tea trays and dinner at The Tea Room, Saturday and Sunday symphony performances, Sunday’s free university recital held on the holiday itself, and Monday’s formal dinners at the Riverview Plaza and NoJa for couples who kept the traditional date.

The pattern benefits everyone involved. Restaurants avoid the single-night crush that a holiday dinner can produce, spreading covers across the weekend and filling tables on nights that might otherwise run slow. Venues get two shots at concert audiences instead of one. And diners get choice: an early celebration, a late one, or both. It is a lesson Mobile’s event planners have applied to other holidays that fall awkwardly — when the calendar won’t cooperate, stretch the celebration until it does.

For Mobile couples in 2011, the practical result was a Valentine’s season with something at nearly every price point. A pair could spend $15 apiece at the symphony, share a $45 four-course dinner with champagne at The Tea Room, or book the $58 tasting at NoJa or the $50-plus banquet at the Riverview Plaza — and top it off with a free recital on the holiday itself. In a city that celebrates its festivals and feasts with enthusiasm all year, the weekend of Feb. 12-14, 2011, gave the Port City one more reason to dress up, make a reservation, and let someone else do the cooking.