Last Sunday my husband and I had our first date in a months. We usually use up our babysitting cards for doctors appointments, meetings and church stuff. However, we were dying to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2. Plus we still needed to use our Bowled Restaurant (featured on my Must Eat List) Groupon. So my mom was kind enough to watch the boys for a few hours so we could go on a much-needed date.

To prepare for the movie we watched the last couple of movies at home. Thankfully we had a couple of Regal Premiere Super Saver Movie Tickets from Christmas, so we hit up Regal Park Place Stadium. We love, love, love all the Harry Potter movies! We go to the movies about twice a year. We see the new Pixar movie (Cars 2) and Harry Potter. I guess we’ll only go once a year now (I hope that’s not true.)

We both loved the movie! One of my favorite characters, Neville Longbottom, had a few really good scenes that only made me appreciate his awkwardness more. Also memorable was Mrs. Weasley dropped the B-word and smote one of Voldemort’s minions (people in the theater went nuts!). Although Dan has read all of the books, I haven’t yet, so I was on the edge of my seat the whole time.

After our afternoon movie, we went to Bowled Restaurant on 4th Street and 34th Avenue North next to Little Caesar’s (yuck!) and one of my favorite consignment shops, Stellie Bellies. The resturant is small with modern decor. Although I didn’t actually count, I’d guess that there are fewer than 20 tables. We were quickly greeted with a fair amount of excitement from our server. He by no means gave a negative experience, but he could’ve been a bit more enthusiastic about the food and our first visit.

He recommended we start with the Orange-Cashew Crusted Shrimp ($8.75). The presentation was wonderful with the skewered shrimp poking out of the orange. The shrimp were pretty good but a couple of them were slightly over-cooked (not so bad that it was worth sending back). However, the sweet chili aioli for dipping was VERY Tasty. It was creamy, tangy and had a bit of a bite to it. I wanted to eat it with a spoon!

For our main course, I opted for one the most popular dishes on the menu, the Chicken Piccata Bowl ($12.95). It was sautéed chicken breast with lemon, capers, tomato, basil & white wine butter sauce served over orzo pasta. I thought the dish was very flavorful. The chicken was very moist and the orzo was nicely cooked. I liked the sauce and the crunch of the capers in each bite. However, I thought the dish could use more color. I think it would’ve looked better with more diced tomatoes and capers on top. It was a large portion, but I got a little tired of the flavor by the last third of the dish, so I stopped and packed it up for lunch the next day.

Dan enjoyed the Bowled Diablo ($14.95), which was a bowl of mussels, clams, gulf shrimp, calamari, & mahi–mahi sautéed & tossed with spicy tomato basil sauce over linguine pasta. This kind of dish appeals to me because it has so many different types of seafood and I can never decide on one. The only downside to him was the spiciness since he is a “mild salsa” kind of man he saved half of his for lunch the next day too; to be fair, I like more spice than him and I probably would’ve felt the same way.

While we were still eating the owner, Michael Cecere, stopped by our table to chat. He was very nice and you could tell he was passionate about his business and the food he served. He recommend we end our meal with his Aunt Sue’s Famous Peach Cobbler ($5.75), which we both devoured. Even though we don’t have much of a sweet tooth, this may have been our very favorite part of the meal, inspired by his Aunt’s recipe. It made me want to go home and make my first cobbler. He also told us how his business really benefited from their Groupon and he hoped to do another one very soon–I’ll share it once it’s available.

We can’t really afford to eat at Bowled often, but we will most likely take advantage of any future Groupons and special offers. Even though they do offer kid-sized meals ($5), we’ll probably go there for another date and leave the little ones at home with a babysitter. Next time I’d like to try the Portobello in Phyllo for a starter and the Grilled Salmon Pasta.

Take a look at their Dinner Menu and tell me what you’d like to try in a comment below.