What are Some of the Best Ideas for an Amazing First Date?

First dates are never easy. There is something about them that forces your heart to leap up into your throat, all while your stomach decides to try gymnastics for the first time; the combination of meeting a relative stranger and the pressure of said meeting going well can be enough to drive you up the wall.

Worse still is figuring out the best form for your first date to take. How casual or formal do you go? What does your date like? And how likely is your chosen activity to reduce the tension? These questions are not straightforward to answer, or we’d all be much more at ease when figuring out what to do for our next romantic dalliance. But some of the following options could be fun and interesting ways to break the ice with your new potential love interest.

Brewery Tour

The independent and craft beer scene has exploded over the past ten years, moving obscure pale ales and powerful stouts from the realms of beverage geekery to the near-mainstream. Nowadays, brewery taprooms and flagship alehouses are the best places to be in any given city: fiercely independent, stocked to the rafters with tasty drinks and not too shabby for atmosphere either.

If you and your date have already bonded somewhat over the taste of the finer things, you could stump up for a brewery tour near you. You both learn something, taste some rare and special drinks together and get to spend the rest of the evening quizzing each other on the fermentation process. What’s not to like?

An Old-Fashioned Dinner Date

Sometimes, though, you can’t beat tradition. Many of the best first dates take place in the classic romantic environment that is the restaurant. There is a glut of fantastic independent venues in the UK, from Temper Restaurant, known for great steaks, to family-run Sicilian hideouts, all of which serve a plethora of wonderful foods. This can make it all the more difficult for you to pick the right place to eat.

Signage specialists instantprint performed their own research on the UK’s cuisine habits, in the hopes of identifying some of the best options for a romantic evening of wining and dining. After collecting search engine results for different types of cuisine, they found that ‘Chinese’ and ‘Italian’ were the most searched-for each month. Meanwhile, ‘Japanese’ and ‘Greek’ were searched for ten times less on average. Whether you play it safe or choose something esoteric is entirely up to you, though.

Go-Karting

Dinner dates are all well and good, but tradition can only get you so far. Every now and then, it takes a ridiculous idea to really set the stage for an unforgettable date. If your prospective love interest is game, why not make things interesting with an adrenaline-pumping, high-octane competition for the ages?

Go-karting is loud, noisy and fast – and when you’re on the track, you certainly won’t be able to make much small talk. But the event will be memorable, and the playful tension as you attempt to lap each other could easy boil over into something a bit more meaningful.