No punctuation

We went for the celebratory birthday to the very smart restaurant at the terribly elegant hotel. It was one of those places where everyone looks like they've just walked out of the pages of a magazine. I felt underdressed, even though I’d especially put in earrings and be-mascara-ed myself for the occasion. You know those places: Where the staff are obviously hired not only for their waitering talents but also for how good they look in their black waitering outfits (ours was gorgeous. More on him later); where there is music, but it’s that subtle kind, in the background, tinkling away, almost as if there’s a dude in the rafters above playing his piano. The kind of place that just oozes, well, subtlety. I always feel a bit like a bull in a china shop in them. It was lovely though.

The wineglasses were huge. It was like drinking out of a fishbowl. Luckily without the fish. My father is a connoisseur of wine. I’m a pleb. I can tell the difference between red and white (and so proud! Don’t blindfold me though). Anyway, Papa duly ordered some delicious wine to pour into the bottom of our fishbowls.

The menu. Well, it’s what they call Asian fusion I think. Everything sounded mouthwateringly delicious. But the menu has no punctuation. Whatsoever. An example:

venison –
springbok shank terrine potato mushroom puree carrot puree herb emulsion savoy cabbage buffon pangratta crumb jus

Hard to work out really, what you’re getting. I had scallops to start, with a crunchy deep-fried seafood specimen on top, served in some seafoody tasting bisque. It was good. I’d only had scallops once before. They had stuffed this version with some fragrantly delicious red stuff. Then I had rib eye steak, vacuum-cooked (?) for two hours, served on garlic mash. Yum. The others had various things, some of which we could discern what was what, others, well, just tasted good. We may never taste those tastes again. It’s difficult to recreate the taste of something when you don’t what it is. We're the pass-around-the-table-so-everyone-tastes variety (as are the neighbours (my parent's neighbours who are like family and actually have a gate between their houses so their kids can come and go freely and swim in their pool), luckily). A smorgasbord of tastes.

The waiter looked like a grown-up cherub. We were a table of six and he payed me lots of attention. I like that. In fact he payed me so much attention that I thought perhaps he might (mistakenly) think I was paying the bill. This was odd, considering the paternalistic (is that the right word?) society we were in (the hotel was one of those Old School kind of places) and I was a younger woman at a table which had amongst it’s guests, two older men. We'll not get into that feminist debate thing. At least not here, now.

Anyhow, I’m going on a bit, let’s leave it at: The food was beautiful, the company great, the hired help delicious and the violet flavoured marshmallows sublime.

When making violet marshmallow do you think they actually crush the petals into the mixture?