If you already know frontend programming fairly well, why not going for Node/Express and re-use part of what you know? You will just have to study new coding approaches without having to change language as well. Once you learn how to write APIs in one language, switching to another one is pretty simple.
To be honest, I'd like to avoid Node.js train at all. Of course, I have some experience creating server side rendering and adding small features like authorization, but as I said, I'd like to dive into different communities and change my environment.
