Menu Tasting

So The Dodgess and I aren't exactly foodies. I remember once talking to a certain English cousin who, when I suggested that I'd splashed out and spent £60 for dinner she was staggered that I'd spent that for two of us - she had spent 50% more than that - per person. 

Once in a while however, we do make an effort in terms of dinner. I remember meals in Salisbury, and a hotel in South Wales the day after we got engaged. Another couple in the same class was a Thai restaurant in Lincoln, and our engagement party in Boston - that food was fabulous. In the past month I've had two such meals. (Incidently, I daresay at some point I will fill a post with the opposite - the most awful meals ever).

The first was my birtday meal - at a hotel on the Waterfront in Singapore. All the more surprising perhaps, because it was a buffet. But not any ordinary buffet. I think I had food from just about every country between England and Japan. And most of it the best that I've tasted. I also had things that I would never normally dream of - my starter consisted of clams, scallops, lobster, crab and oyster... not a bad little platter. Then a series of taster courses prepared pretty much in front of our eyes. To end was a sponge cake that had I breathed a little harder would have taken off.


And this evening, the Dodgess and I had our wedding banquet - or at least the tasting session for it. I have to say that I'd have been delighted with probably 7 of the 8 courses. We started with the chinese version of a cold cut platter, and ended with mango mousse, by way of pork noodles, chicken, garoupa, shark fin soup, sea cucumber, and scallops. At the end the chef came and talked things through with us. Apparently he knows that sometimes the garoupa isn't great - it comes from farmed rather than fresh stock. A couple of little changes to the menu, and all is good, I hope.


But the really really remarkable thing about most of these nights is, although I know that the food was awesome, I can't really remember the food in detail. The truth is, even on the two nights I've just eulogised about, the food has only been a side attraction.