Hope everyone is enjoying this lazy week between Christmas and NYE! After a very stressful two months at work, I was so craving this downtime—and am really glad I took two full weeks off. I think it might be the most time I’ve ever had off since I started working! This coming week, I have no big plans—I really just want to deep clean my apartment, workout, catch up with friends, keep up with the Kardashians, and, of course, catch on writing some posts for this blog!

By now, most of y’all know I have a dinner club with my friends Taylor and Julie, and once a month, we try a new-to-us restaurant here in DC. December is actually the one-year anniversary of the club, and we decided back in July where we were going to go to celebrate the holidays—Filomena in Georgetown! For those of you unfamiliar, Filomena is an institution and famed Italian restaurant in DC, and they are known for their holiday decorations (not just at Christmas, but at every holiday!). It’s long been on my bucket list to eat at Filomena at Christmastime since they go all-out with the decor, and now having been, I want it to be an annual tradition. It put me in such a festive mood We went on a Friday night and booked our reservation in early November—so if you want to go in December, definitely plan ahead!

Our reservation was at 9pm, so we had a drink at The Sovereign first and then headed over. Once we arrived at Filomena, we did have to wait about 30 minutes for our table—so I’d recommend planning for a wait even if you have a reservation, but I promise it’s worth it! When you walk in, you are instantly transported to a holiday winter wonderland. There are decorations everywhere you look, including a huge Christmas tree in the dining room, and an extremely festive playlist going. I’ve never been to Rolf’s in NYC, but I’ve heard it compared to Filomena often.

While we were waiting for our table, we decided to get champagne to celebrate. when we asked them to bring the rest of the bottle to our table when we were seated, they had lost it—so we got an entirely new bottle for free!

Sometimes when you go to a restaurant that is as decked out as Filomena, the food is subpar, but that is not the case as Filomena. As soon as we sat down, we were handed a big basket of fresh baked bread, and then we ordered the meatballs and arancini. For my entree, I ordered the gnocchi della mamma, but opted for rigatoni instead of the gnocchi. It was so good and the portion size was huge—I was able to get four meals out of the leftovers! I so wish we had saved room for dessert, but we were absolutely stuffed.

At the end of every meal at Filomena, they bring you complimentary amaretto and sambucca that you pour for yourself at the table. Such a nice tradition that really makes you feel like a welcome guest of the family at Filomena! It was such an amazing way to celebrate our one year of dinner club—I would love to get back there sometime this year and see how they decorate for other holidays!

In case you’re curious, here’s the full list of places we visited as a dinner club in our first year:

• The Smith
• Officina
• Iron Gate
• Primrose
• Maydan (our unanimous number one spot this year!)
• Maketto
• The Dabney
• Himitsu
• Red Hen
• Seven Reasons
• The Pembroke