What a year 2015 has been for us at Date Night! According to WordPress, we posted 63 times, were visited by over 12,000 readers, who read over 25,000 of our reviews. We’ve eaten in four countries and tried the “world’s best apple pie” in Amsterdam. We ate our way through Florence, Alabama in May and went to a dinner where peanut butter was the star. Our most popular post was our Roswell Rib Roundup with over 1500 views. We’ll have to do more of those. We’ve had good meals, great meals, and believe it or not, hardly any bad meals. Let’s get to it, our year in review…

Best BBQ in our bellies: Spiced Right Rib House won that rib roundup. Loved those ribs. The brisket at Twin Smokers was incredible, making the meat at Swallow at the Hollow pale in comparison.

Best restaurant near our house: Hoof and Ale, Marietta. We discovered their burger in January, and have eaten there at least four times since. Don’t miss the half price beer nights on Wednesday.

Best place we ate all year: You really think we can pick one? Restaurants that stood out were Mezza Luna, Bistro Niko, Stem Wine Bar, and Ecco.

Fried chicken nirvana: In February, we finally got to Greenwood’s for their fried chicken. We compared this meal to the rest of the fried chicken we had all year. Nobody came close.

Best local beers: Monday Night Drafty Kilt aged in bourbon barrels was our beer of the year. Buy it if you can find it. We also really enjoyed Sweetwater’s Bourbon Barrel Imperial Stout. Reformation in Woodstock is making some great beers. Try the Providence Belgian triple if you see it on a menu.

Best American beer: Allagash Curieux, a Belgian aged in bourbon barrels was one of the best we had all year. Do you see a trend here?

Best international beers: Every beer we had on our beer tour in Brussels, Belgium. We really like our Belgian beers here at Date Night. Anyone want to meet us at the Brick Store in Decatur?

Best/worst food court: Krog Street Market. The food we had from Fred’s and Yalla was very good, but we had to wait in line a long time and then couldn’t find a place to sit. Or a place to park either.

Fast food is not good. Good food is not fast. Or is it? Our grilled cheese sandwiches were perfect at Tom+Chee, but the grilled cheese I ordered at Del Frisco’s Grille was close to a disaster.

Say what? The AJC food critic wrote a “year in review” article in December. That must have been a hard one to write since she moved here in June. While we are talking about our local paper, they hated Oy! Restaurant, but we liked it.

Is it us? A few weeks after we visit Lusca, they announce they are closing and turning the space into a catering facility. Alfredo’s spent 41 years in Atlanta, and as soon as we ate there, they announced that they are closing as well.

Event that experienced turbulence: Hops in the Hangar. The setting at the Delta Airlines Museum was great, but the fact that everyone there almost starved brought this party down to earth really fast.

Is the food truck craze over? It’s so 2012, but we still found big crowds, long lines and good food at the Smyrna food trucks in June.

Strangest service: Le Bistro at Roswell Provisions. Our server was having perhaps the worst day of her life. She should have called in sick.

Worst trend for food bloggers: Twitter chats. We participated in two of these things. Think of a room full of people talking at the same time as loud as they can, but they are typing, not talking. Bloggers use this to get more hits on their Twitter pages. It doesn’t work for us.

Best people in the world: Our readers, who kept reading this blog all year. And unlike that AJC food critic, we have been writing restaurant reviews in Atlanta since 2011. (For a good time, read our first post on Date Night, a review of Cinco’s Mexican Cantina in Smyrna.) Thanks for coming with us on our culinary adventures and we hope you will stick with us in 2016!