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What a rubbish title to this bit. The bottom line is that a story about a night out in a restaurant is bound not to be interesting, so why should its title offer false hope of anything other than a catalogue of trivial events? However, I suppose one important lesson we can learn from this story is the value of pre-booking. Caroline and I had suffered a few minutes of stressful and unnecessary tension, caused by attempting to find food on spec, so we'd learned about pre-booking. This particular restaurant was within a hotel, which my notes suggest was called the Westbury, but could have been called anything, because it doesn't matter and my writing is so bad it could have been anything - possibly even the Wetlery. The choice of restaurant was based on Caroline's love of seafood. I'm not that fussed by seafood myself, but I'm happy to appreciate anything that's edible, regardless of its genre.
Anyway, back to the trivia of the night's eatery. I'll try to cut out the dull stuff. We had an interesting waiter. Really, he was fascinating. He had a sort of mumble thing going on - you couldn't get every word he said, which made for an interesting communication problem. In addition, he had a bizarre habit of mumbling pleasantries in the middle of his sentences-thank-you-very-much. It was almost like he was battling a polite version of Tourettes syndrome-ank-you.
Apparently the starter was a clear seafood chowder - I was disappointed to discover that mine came without the mussels that were part of the recipe. Clearly the chef had been careless with his ladle as he'd dispensed my portion. I'm actually not scarred for life by this omission, it's only the careful note-taking from the time which has revealed this blemish on the culinary landscape. However, I had had so much fun at the previous evening's dinner, with a mussel in a small cup, that perhaps I'd had my fill of mussels for one trip anyway... actually, I hadn't. My main course was mussels, so I didn't need any soup-dwelling mussels to confuse my palette.
I suppose it's fair to point out the sheer audacity of a restaurant that diddles you out of mussels, provides you with a nonsense muttering waiter, and charges a mandatory service charge, and THEN leaves a space on the bill for a gratuity. We kept the space unfettered by numbers.
Ok, so we got through the story of the meal quite well. I don't think it turned out that dull. It would be rude of me to bore with tales of walking back to a hotel and going to bed. Those things are bound to have happened, though.
20 May 2004
Ashley Frieze