A box of chocolates, a nice dinner: Valentine's Day wouldn't be the same without the people who make the chocolates and the dinners.
In the kitchen where Jason and Rebecca Severs spend almost every evening, they make the kind of food that most people would describe as romantic: southeastern Italian cuisine.
It’s especially romantic after it leaves the kitchen and arrives, perfectly plated, in the intimate dining room…
Where anyone can eat it.
That's because Jason and Rebecca Severs are the owners of Bari, a small Italian restaurant on Overton Square.
The restaurateurs met 17 years ago while working in a restaurant. It’s safe to say that Valentine’s Day, for nearly two decades, has been strictly business in their family.
They’ve already taken 100 reservations for Saturday night. The Valentine’s Day seating has been fully booked for four weeks.
“But probably 200 people will show up trying to get in,” Jason says. Which doesn’t make it an ideal night for true food lovers.
“I would say that 90 percent of the people coming in on Saturday night are first-time diners,” Rebecca says.
It’s hard, Jason says, to get to know a restaurant’s strengths from a special-occasion menu, on an evening with a quick turnover.
That can stifle romance as well.
“Unfortunately we’re so busy that they can’t sit and linger,” Jason says. “They’ve got to eat and go. And that’s with every restaurant in town. Every place is booked tonight. You might be able to sit at a bar somewhere, but you’re not going to find a place to eat tonight.”
For the Severs, Valentine’s Day isn’t all bad. Many diners come back later to try the regular menu, on a night when the restaurant isn’t slammed.
For Jason and Rebecca, romance doesn't have to be complicated.
“I’ll buy a bottle of prosecco or champagne and chocolate so we can have it at home after work,” Rebecca says.
There’s nothing better than a great French champagne for romance.
But when it comes to chocolate, Memphis holds its own. For five generations, the Dinstuhl family has brought sweetness to Valentine’s Day, which is also one of their busiest times.
Their staff nearly doubles for the task of covering about 50,000 strawberries in chocolate. Owner Becky Dinstuhl explained the process on Thursday, the day after the strawberries arrived from Florida.
“We take the fresh strawberries, we clean them and cap them,” Dinstuhl said. “Then they are going to be immersed in our special fondant.”
Fondant is a coating of sugar, which the strawberry’s acids will break down and turn into juice.
“So when you bite into the chocolate-covered strawberry, you’re going to get a mouthful of strawberry juice with the strawberry,” Dinstuhl says.
After the fondant cools, the berries are laid on a slow conveyor belt. They then proceed through a curtain of milk chocolate.
Once the berries have been, what they call “enrobed” in chocolate, they’re packaged into one-pound boxes. About 5,600 boxes will be sold this year.
And those are just the strawberries. There is also a refrigerator full of other chocolate covered fruits, like grapes and chunks of pineapple.
“It is the food of the gods,” Dinstuhl says. “And this is the love season. So we like to say chocolate is going to make everyone happy.”
Take note, gentlemen. The best way to make sure you’ve got Valentine’s Day covered… is to cover it in chocolate.
