About Me

Long before I fell in love with Dennis, I fell in love with jazz. Before jazz, french fries. Before french fries, books. Silk scarves are my style code. Custom crosswords are my love language. Aretha Franklin is my answer to everything.

Dates with Dennis started, quite simply, as a way for me to keep track of a promise he made when we met: the perfect first date meant we get to do it 10,000 more times.

It is inspired by the countless dinners and drinks and experiences that we’ve shared, a gentle homage to gestures once studied across candlelit tables that we now imitate affectionately, to the glances we learned to interpret in crowded rooms and now understand instantly, to the stubborn pieces of food that get stuck in toothy smiles because they don’t want to miss a thing either.

A quiet archive of moments that I don’t want to forget.

This is the place for the micro moments that have come to mean everything; the little things that leave the biggest marks - on white Japanese denim and silk scarves and on tentative hearts that have softened, one meal, a few cocktails and several stories at a time. 

It is a slow dance to the sound of breaking bread, the melody of mixed voices, the rhythm of a good waiter. This is for the side dish that steals the show, the last minute ingredient that lingers on the tongue long after the plate is placed in the dishwasher and you’re leaning in for a goodnight kiss, the promise of a new menu printed on plump, patterned paper. It is a toast to the unexpected pleasure of dubious flavour combinations and to impeccable taste. This is my salute to details that make me say “damn it: why didn’t I think of that?”

Dates with Dennis is not a food or lifestyle blog. I didn’t want to call it a love letter either, but I suppose, in fact, it is: a love letter to the gorgeous occasion of dining with loved ones - and with love.

Welcome to Dates with Dennis.

I’m Esther, by the way.