Where was I? In a concrete bunker eating a two-inch round of risotto from a giant white plate. It looked like a snail on a wagon wheel.
Soon we had finished and the waiter cleared away the steering wheel plates and took them down the dark stairwell and then came up again and poured another half-inch of wine into my giant wineglass. I was getting to like it. I still couldn't detect what the notes on the palate were but I was starting to think wet hay in a barn.
The main course rolled around after a while, maybe three hours, but who's watching the clock? Let's take our time. There's wine to be drunk and people to chat to. I had ordered the assorted gyoza of roast vegetables and it arrived on a plate as big as the previous one except this time it was square, like a ceramic flag, just for a change. A citrusy dipping sauce was in its own dear little dish over in a corner of the square plate while a few other ingredients came along for the ride and just hung around on the plate not bothering the gyoza.
Once again, technically perfect cooking but I didn't know whether I was in Japan or France and I wasn't even in either. They call it fusion cuisine. I add a prefix. Both cutlery and chopsticks were on the table and I picked up the chopsticks. Actually, I cut the gyoza in half with the knife first, and then I picked up the chopsticks. I bit the gyoza and a broadbean fell out and looked forlorn on the plate, as if it had been snatched away from a big bowl of sage-buttered brothers and stuffed into a piece of pastry along with a tiny piece of pumpkin, a shard of red bell pepper, a pea and three capers. I put it out of its misery. I ate it.
The diner to my left had chosen the roast lamb rack with this and that. It was cooked to pink-cloud perfection. The chef had been busy with the scalpel again, removing every last shred of visible fat. The rack lay in a little rainpuddle of fluid. There was an eclectic red vegetable pillarbox next to the rainpuddle and an evergreen shrub of something, maybe seaweed, maybe not, beyond that. The whole performance was underlined, literally, with three very thin parallel lines of sauce or reduction or whatever the hell we're calling gravy today. Why the parallel lines? I don't know. Ask the chef. I just eat here.
We helped ourselves - after you; no! after you! - to sides, one of rocket fluttered with shaved parmesan and the other, a dainty boat of little roasted potatoes. Cute.
Then one of party decided to give a speech and it was funny and there was laughter.
The waiter's head popped out of the stairway yet again followed by the rest of him and, clearing his throat 'ahem', he asked our intimate little party, could we please be just a teensy bit quieter? because there was a couple dining downstairs - we could see them from our concrete and metal loft - and they couldn't hear each other whispering sweet menu ingredients to each other? He was as polite as a diplomat about it, and we immediately racheted our conversation level down from landing jumbo jet to ticking-over helicopter.
Then he busied himself splashing more sauvignon blanc around. Crushed limes? Hibiscus flowers? I don't know.
Where's dessert?
Soon we had finished and the waiter cleared away the steering wheel plates and took them down the dark stairwell and then came up again and poured another half-inch of wine into my giant wineglass. I was getting to like it. I still couldn't detect what the notes on the palate were but I was starting to think wet hay in a barn.
The main course rolled around after a while, maybe three hours, but who's watching the clock? Let's take our time. There's wine to be drunk and people to chat to. I had ordered the assorted gyoza of roast vegetables and it arrived on a plate as big as the previous one except this time it was square, like a ceramic flag, just for a change. A citrusy dipping sauce was in its own dear little dish over in a corner of the square plate while a few other ingredients came along for the ride and just hung around on the plate not bothering the gyoza.
Once again, technically perfect cooking but I didn't know whether I was in Japan or France and I wasn't even in either. They call it fusion cuisine. I add a prefix. Both cutlery and chopsticks were on the table and I picked up the chopsticks. Actually, I cut the gyoza in half with the knife first, and then I picked up the chopsticks. I bit the gyoza and a broadbean fell out and looked forlorn on the plate, as if it had been snatched away from a big bowl of sage-buttered brothers and stuffed into a piece of pastry along with a tiny piece of pumpkin, a shard of red bell pepper, a pea and three capers. I put it out of its misery. I ate it.
The diner to my left had chosen the roast lamb rack with this and that. It was cooked to pink-cloud perfection. The chef had been busy with the scalpel again, removing every last shred of visible fat. The rack lay in a little rainpuddle of fluid. There was an eclectic red vegetable pillarbox next to the rainpuddle and an evergreen shrub of something, maybe seaweed, maybe not, beyond that. The whole performance was underlined, literally, with three very thin parallel lines of sauce or reduction or whatever the hell we're calling gravy today. Why the parallel lines? I don't know. Ask the chef. I just eat here.
We helped ourselves - after you; no! after you! - to sides, one of rocket fluttered with shaved parmesan and the other, a dainty boat of little roasted potatoes. Cute.
Then one of party decided to give a speech and it was funny and there was laughter.
The waiter's head popped out of the stairway yet again followed by the rest of him and, clearing his throat 'ahem', he asked our intimate little party, could we please be just a teensy bit quieter? because there was a couple dining downstairs - we could see them from our concrete and metal loft - and they couldn't hear each other whispering sweet menu ingredients to each other? He was as polite as a diplomat about it, and we immediately racheted our conversation level down from landing jumbo jet to ticking-over helicopter.
Then he busied himself splashing more sauvignon blanc around. Crushed limes? Hibiscus flowers? I don't know.
Where's dessert?
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