A few weeks ago I found myself sitting in a local pizzeria at 2am. Now this is not the first time this has happened. Truth be told, I’ve probably been in my fair share of pizzerias during the hours after midnight. We have four years of college to thank for that. But this night was different.

Since moving to a new neighborhood, I’ve been tying to Yelp all of the different restaurants we’ve been trying. I love the idea of crossing places off the list and really getting a feel for the area we are living in! So I’ve been making a mental note to “check in” whenever we are sitting at a table in a new restaurant. This particular day at 2am in Sal’s Pizza, I remembered to quickly open up Yelp and check-in and it prompted me to leave a review and answer a bunch of generic questions about the place. I was mindlessly swiping and tapping to answer the questions, when Yelp asked me if the restaurant was romantic.

Now, I looked around and my immediate answer was, no, absolutely not. Sal’s Pizza is not romantic, and in fact, did not even have very good pizza. There were no tablecloths on the tables, or candles– not even the fake, flameless kind. There were crappy soaps playing on a small, out-dated TV in the corner of the room– fuzzy lines included. The place was a little run down. The vinyl on the seats was peeling off in places and the table itself had a slightly sticky feeling to it. Like they had run a dirty rag over the table 10 different times that night. We were sitting by the door and each time it opened and the little bell tinkled, in came a blast of winter chill, cold enough to make you shrink into yourself and move in closer to your late-night-pizza-eating-friend. The smell of fresh pizza filled the store, and steam fogged the inside of the windows. I remember actually hearing the buzz of the neon PIZZA sign. I looked over and watched Ry take a bite of a slice of steaming, hot pizza– cheese sliding right off, as it does. And in that moment, I thought to myself, yes. Yes, this is romantic. What could be more romantic than sitting in an empty, run-down pizza shop in the middle of the night during the dead of winter with your one and only?

Pretty much nothing, if you ask me.