I’ve never quite known where I stand on Valentine’s Day. Like most people who work in restaurants, I’ve spent more Valentine’s Days watching other people’s romances unfold than participating in my own. That has a way of shaping your views.

Valentine’s Day in a restaurant is a peculiar, faintly theatrical thing. On the surface, it’s about love, candles, soft lighting and a slightly different playlist. A set menu promising romance in three courses, plus a dessert you’re encouraged to share. Behind the scenes, it’s about margins, marketing gimmicks, creating FOMO and the comforting knowledge that truffle and a bubbly pink drink can magically add double digits to your bottom line.

Karan Gokani | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

As a chef and restaurateur, Valentine’s Day arrives with a familiar mix of cynicism, opportunism and anxiety. We start planning early. Not because we’re hopeless romantics, but because love, as it turns out, pays. Menus get........

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