Eat Your Heart Out This Valentine's Day

For couples seeking a bit of a wild culinary experience this Valentine's Day, a handful of chefs across the country are offering dishes that are sure to fit the bill. Sure, a plate of oysters or chocolate-covered strawberries may set the mood, but a meal featuring heart will surely get the blood going. Whether serving up beef, duck, or celery, these restaurants are preparing innovative heart dishes fit for this special occasion.

Frontier in Chicago is a restaurant known for serving up meat-driven dishes, especially ones featuring game. This Valentine's Day, the restaurant is offering an entire menu dedicated to hearts, with a "Cold Hearted" first course featuring beef heart tartare, a second course called "Cupid's Arrow" consisting of sugar cane-skewered lamb hearts, and a final course called "Sweet Heart," that offers veal heart and sweet potato ravioli.

Incanto in San Francisco, helmed by celebrity chef Chris Cosentino, who is a widely known proponent of offal, is featuring heart in its Valentine's Day menu this year. Diners can choose lamb heart tartare with anchovy and mint as a starter for their meal. Last year, Cosentino presented couples with his signature beef heart tartare (pictured below).

Supper, a seasonally-driven American restaurant in Philadelphia, is offering Valentine's Day diners heart in two forms this year — once in their Aleppo pepper-dusted scallops with celery heart, fennel, balsamic raisins, and brown butter biscotti, and then again in their Creekstone Farm beef short ribs with roasted beets, potatoes, cress, and pickled beef heart remoulade.

Foreign and Domestic is an Austin, Texas, neighborhood restaurant with seasonally changing fare that's owned and run by married chef-couple Ned and Jodi Elliot. The duo will serve up braised Wagyu beef with potato gratin and beef heart ragú as part of their special Valentine's Day menu. The organ-filled offerings don't stop there, though — the menu also includes pickled duck tongue, blood sausage, and smothered beef tongue.

Russell House Tavern in Cambridge, Mass. is sticking to what they do best this Valentine's Day, which means delighting diners with an assortment of offal-filled creations. Pulling from their regular menu, Russell House will offer Archer Farms beef heart ravioli with pecorino crunchies, red wine sauce, pickled apple (pictured above). New additions will include lamb's tongue gnocchi, braised lamb's neck, and beef tongue cannelloni.

Urbana, a trendy Mediterranean restaurant and bar in Washington, D.C. is offering separate special Valentine's Day menus in the dining room and the bar. The bar menu will include a variety of snacks and small plates featuring hearts, cheeks, and tongues.

Area Four, a coffee house and bakery by day and pizza bar by night in Cambridge's Kendall Square neighborhood, is encouraging Boston singles to recruit their friends for an anti-Valentine's Day meal. Their Misery Loves Company menu includes a "Bloody" Heart Pizza, consisting of beef hearts, tomato sauce, caramelized onions, house-made mozzarella, and pecorino gremolata (pictured above).

New York Central Restaurant in the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City isn't joining in on the animal hearts trend this Valentine's Day, but they will be delighting diners with a Sweethearts of Palm salad, featuring carrot purée, lobster, frisee, and of course, hearts of palm, with a carrot-ginger vinaigrette.