Take your Valentine to one of these 3 date night restaurants. Here's what to order

Love is in the air and miso glazed cod is on the table this month, so I'm offering a trio of romantic dinner recommendations based on recent experiences in Phoenix and Scottsdale.

In Arcadia, I sipped California junmai sake from a cedar box at a Japanese izakaya, forked pieces of heavenly charred fish that I dipped in ginger butter. Over in Scottsdale, my dinner partner and I shared a plate of duck breast with roasted plums on the patio of a Southern French restaurant. On another trek to Scottsdale, I enjoyed pizza and pasta in a bohemian candlelit space run by a Michelin-starred chef.

As you make your February dining plans, I recommend seeking out a reservation at one of these date-night dinner spots.

Candlelit pizza at Campo

Imagine walking into a stylish Airbnb in the Italian countryside and finding a Michelin-starred chef hanging out in the kitchen. That's the feeling I got when I sat down at Campo, a new neighborhood bistro owned by the award-winning Valley chef Alex Stratta.

Antique landscape paintings in golden frames hang next to funky potted ferns, giving the restaurant a vintage Mediterranean look that works best in the dim, candlelit lighting of the evening.

Campo's pizza is a force to be reckoned with. The team worked with Noble Bread to develop a unique blend of rye and wheat flours along with type 85 pizza flour for the dough, which is then baked on a Hearthstone oven until the sauce is molten.

We ordered the Marco, which came topped with wide slices of Calabrese salami interspersed with crumbles of Schreiner's sausage and flecks of fresh basil. The crust bubbles and erupts into a chewy puff of bread that holds up to the tomato sauce and generous scatters of mozzarella, which is greasy, in the best way.

Details: 8260 N. Hayden Road, Scottsdale. 480-597-9195, campoitalian.com.

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Decadent duck in chic digs at Francine

I can see why on a Saturday night, Francine is the spot. The Southern French food at this celebrated Scottsdale Fashion Square restaurant is just as attractive as the atmosphere, and dare I say it, even more compelling.

Francine's menu is a collage of recipes from chef Laurent Halasz's mother, for whom the restaurant is named, skillfully put together by executive chef Brian Archibald. The cooking is vegetable-forward and light, made with olive oil rather than the butter sauces that Paris is known for.

Everything is adorned with edible flowers and scatterings of fresh herbs.

Francine is a place where you can ball out with oysters and filet mignon or snack on a simple salad Nicoise. The dish that made me swoon was the duck breast.

They looked like beets and tasted like jolts of cranberry juice, but the red circular slabs on the plate were actually roasted plums. Their deep sourness was a perfect foil for the juicy duck, cooked to a striking rare and split in half to display its redness.

Details: 4710 N. Goldwater Blvd., Scottsdale. 480-690-6180, francinerestaurant.com.

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Flawless miso cod at the modern izakaya Nanaya

Nanaya opened in the summer of 2020 and specializes in "Japanese comfort foods" like ramen, milk bread sandwiches, robata meat skewers and fried snacks.

The bar area takes up a substantial portion of the main dining room. Dark wood paneled walls are filled with vintage Japanese posters.

The restaurant is serious about sake, with each selection marked with lines indicating where the wine falls on the spectrums of sweet/dry and light/rich. But Nanaya also boasts an interesting cocktail list of drinks that incorporate Japanese flavors like a black sesame old fashioned and a margarita made with the Japanese citrus paste yuzu kosho.

The miso cod is one of half a dozen entrees. It's glazed in a lush miso butter and seared to perfection with dueling layers of glutinous flesh and crisp edges. The fish is placed over an earthy forbidden rice drizzled with ginger butter.

Sensual and downright flawless in execution, the refined plate of fish helped me to understand what makes Nanaya so special. With its broad selection of Japanese dishes and sophisticated atmosphere, it's an under-the-radar date night spot that deserves to be discovered.

Details: 3603 E. Indian School Road, Suite B, Phoenix. 602-354-3532, nanayajapanesekitchen.com.

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Reach reporter Andi Berlin at [email protected]. Follow her on Facebook @andiberlin, Instagram @andiberlin or Twitter @andiberlin.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Romantic metro Phoenix restaurants that are perfect for date night