Beijing Boyce

After sending flowers to yourself, strategically placing wrapped boxes of chocolate on your desk, and faking several hot phone calls at the office - what to do on Valentine’s Day?

Besides the many hotels and stand-alone restaurants that will be catering to couples, here are a few options for singles looking for a love connection.

Le Petit Gourmand - Chat, read, dance or gaze longingly at the wood-burning stove at the “after dinner party” on the deck; soft drinks / beer: RMB10; wine: RMB20 per glass; Champagne: RMB350 per bottle; from 9:30 PM; contact Axel axel.mx@club-internet.fr.

Salud – Speedating Specialists presents “Bring a buddy you’d never date, take a buddy you’d like to mate”; the RMB50 cover includes a draft beer and discounted drinks; from 9 PM.

Yugong Yishan - “Our favorite DJs mash it up!” shouts the invite; from 9 PM

The Rickshaw – “Hate roses? Hate sappy music? Hate love?”, then check out this anti-Valentine’s Day party and find your cynical counterpart; all day, all night

Beijing Playhouse - Catch Love Letters, a play about, “the staid, dutiful Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and the lively, unstable Melissa Gardner. They sit side by side at tables and read the correspondence of their bittersweet relationship.” For ticket info/reservations, contact performance@beijingplayhouse.com / 13718908922; Block 8; 7:30 PM, February 14-16

Then again, you could splurge on a bottle of sparkling Champagne, hit the gourmet shop for ingredients, whip together a home-cooked meal for your significant other, and give each other the “spatula treatment.”

Let’s get cooking.

Previous: Put Valentine’s in your Pipes and smoke it

Since opening in December in the old Browns spot, I have eaten lunch at Revelations seven or eight times. This place, to put it lightly, offers some heavy-duty value.Yes, Revelations is a ghost restaurant - I have seen no more than three tables of people, including my own, at any given time in this cavernous spot. Yes, management is already playing with the menu - a place that dabbles truffle oil in soup and makes its own chocolate has added to the menu “Hawaii pizza” (avoid it unless you like semisweet sauce, bland cheese and meat that looks nothing like ham with which I am familiar). Yes, the staff is still learning the ropes - The Flash and I had no fewer than three waitresses handle our table and, while polite, they still mixed up our dishes.

But for value, Revelations is hard to beat.

Consider lunch last week. My set menu included complimentary homemade bread, cream of cauliflower soup, and quiche with a side of warm potato and ham salad and a side of greens. Add a coffee, and the bill came to… RMB40! Best of all, the food was good.

The Flash had beef bourguinon and found it somewhat localized. “They’re definitely not using bean sprouts in this dish in France,” he noted. Even so, once he tucked in, he found it tasty. “It tastes like beef goulash with a stir fry. Actually, the flavor combination is good.” His meal, if I recall correctly, cost RMB58.

On Tuesday, I visited Revelations again, this time with MH. I had the spaghetti bolognaise set menu (RMB42), Belgian fries (RMB15) and a coffee (RMB8)*, while she had the grilled shrimp and pesto angel hair pasta set menu (RMB88). Good eats all around, though I am nearly at my limit for cream of cauliflower soup for the decade (Revelations, please bring back the oxtail soup). However, near beggars cannot be choosers and I figure I’ll be back at Revelations sooner rather than later.

Previous posts: Bye Browns, hello Revelations