It's that time of year...

I'm new to this forum, and pretty much to the world of fine dining. I have finally opened my eyes to the pleasures of good food and drink. I'm a 22-year old college student and slowly beginning to test the waters of Chicago's culinary scene. My two big forays into fine dining in the past year were Moto (Sept.) and Schwa just recently. (Like I said, new to the scene ) I loved them both, and can't wait to return (although I'm waiting for spring produce at Schwa).

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone could recommend a moderately priced, but quality restaurant for Valentine's Day. I won't be actually going out on V-Day itself as my boyfriend is a cook and will be occupied, so special menus or anything like that don't matter. I just want to take him somewhere special, delicious and memorable and that won't break a poor college students carefully balanced budget.

So, on that note - hello to you all and thanks!

I dunno what's moderately priced for a college student these days, but how about Avec or Blackbird?

Yeah, those two were definitely on the top of my list.

For a "special" night I would spend around $100-$120 - somewhere in there. I don't think that that's what my friends would consider affordable though haha.

As the resident Sweets and Savories promoter on this forum, I'll go ahead and recommend...Sweets and Savories. For Valentine's Day they're doing a five course menu which will be $60 and will include wine pairings (I think the tasting menu is only $35 without wine).

You can read more about them here:
http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=6047

We've also done Valentine's Day at Roy's which was very good, but I think was more than $120 for the two of us.