An Unbelievable Happy Unbirthday Evening Out At A Restaurant
Yesterday I had an unbelievable evening out at a restaurant, a Fawlty Towers experience.
My host was a man I’d met on a dating site. He'd emailed me months previously and added me to his favourites. I blocked him.
Then he found my blog and wrote a complimentary comment saying he agreed with a previous person who’d said he'd love to take the author out to dinner. I’m flattered, and feeling hungry. So I phoned immediately and we got on. We had so much in common. We both play duplicate bridge regularly, have done so for years - and come bottom, every time.
He tells me he has booked a restaurant on line and assures me that even if it is fully booked the restaurant will find a place for us because he has told them it’s my birthday. It isn’t! What other surprises will my date bring?
At the restaurant my host ceremoniously hands across the table to me a plain white envelope. He confides, "Your divorce papers!"
I'm in hysterics. Inside is a print-out of my blog from the dating site and he’s just added a comment telling the world that he is looking forward to taking me out to dinner.
I am embarrassed. I feel awfully conspicuous that he put our private tryst on the Internet, on screen around the world, as if I'm on TV on Cilla Black's Blind Date.
He asks eagerly, "Do I look like my picture?"
He is a sweetie. Not the high-powered intellectual I would like to marry, but he’s not the marrying type, a practical type, and pleasantly jolly. I grin and say truthfully, "You are much better looking than your picture."
He smiles, very happy.
I add, "When I saw your photo, I knew things could only get better."
I asked, "Am I what you expected?"
"I didn’t know what to expect. I found you on two websites," he says, "giving different ages. Change them. Knock off another couple of years – you can get away with it."
I was flattered. My host was a Greek-Cypriot with a heavy Greek accent plus a tendency to talk in descending volume sentences so that the punchline always left him laughing uproariously at his own jokes. I smiled politely, uneasily, looking puzzled. After he finished laughing, every other time, I summoned up enough courage and curiosity to ask, "Could you say that again?" I am glad I did. Because that meant I got half the jokes. Instead of none.
The Food
He ordered bottle of sparkling water, which did not arrive until the second request. After my host had choked on something. Only after he needed water urgently. We agreed that the water might have arrived after he had died. ROFL.
My host's steak was cooked to a crisp with the outside burned black. He didn’t complain at the time because he was too hungry to send it back. I should have taken a photo of it to prove the point, alongside the menu showing the restaurant name.
The dessert arrived and his custard was so solid that when he turned the jug upside down nothing flowed out. He had not enough to fill the plate, and complained that custard should cover the dessert. He tried to extract the custard. The waiter saw and offered to get replacement custard.
The crumble on the apple crumble was undercooked, like a lukewarm paste. The obliging waiter brings up fresh, liquid, hot custard. After my companion has finished his crumble.
My crème brulee was cool with a rock-hard topping, like trying to crack diamonds with your teeth. You end up feeling as if the dentist has filled your teeth with crystal sugar. You spend a lot of time sucking at your teeth and wondering whether to go and clean your teeth now or later while your host wonders why your mouth is clenched, you look absent-minded and you are not getting his jokes.
The Wine
We hadn't finished our wine so he gave it to the party of six women at the next table, which I thought was a nice touch, thoughtful, generous, clever.
My host had arrived early and ordered himself a beer, then copied my idea of a kir, then ordered a bottle of blush wine although I said I would not drink more than one glass of wine.
He had talked to me earlier in the week from midnight to 3 am, that day had eaten only a bacon sandwich all day so he drank on an empty stomach, and at one point he shut his eyes, literally nodded off, jerked awake, to see me looking at him in wide-eyed horror, because for one nasty moment I wondered whether he was going to have a heart attack, or fall asleep.
He apologised.
I was convinced that either the owner or the chef was absent. I was right on both counts.
At the end of the meal the head waiter, a tall, eager-to-please, good-looking young man with an unintelligible Italian accent, asked, in his Italian accent, "How wazza your mill?"
My host, who left no tip, said something with a heavy Greek accent, along the lines of, "Young chman, do you want my chonest hanswer?"
The waiter looked confused.
The waiter repeats, "How wazza your mill?"
My host repeats, "You whant my chonest answer?"
The waiter does not understand, and, if he does, he doesn't want an honest answer. ROFL. So he does not know how to reply. He can't say no. But he can't say yes, either because he doesn't want an honest answer, or because he doesn't understand the question.
This could go on for ever, until I am under the table, with the tablecloth in my mouth trying to conceal my laughter.
My host decides not to ask again, just to give his opinion of the meal.
He is diplomatic. He asks a rhetorical question. "When a customer orders a steak, which is medium to well done, it should be almost rare in the middle, but well done on the outside, shouldn't it?"
The waiter has probably not quite followed this, because the sentence was too long, the accent was too heavy, and he isn't really listening. And he is trying to frame a suitable answer. But the customer is always right, so he agrees, enthusiastically. ROFL. "Yessa, yessa."
My host repeats, "Do shoo whant my honest answer?"
The waiter is still confused.
My host demands, "Why was the steak burned on the choutside? Chow do you cook it?"
The waiter says happily, "We alla ways cook eat this way." ROFL. "Eena frying pan."
My host and I are equally astonished.
My host says incredulously, "The steak is thick." Not the waiter, the steak. ROFL. "You cook a theek steak like that - in a frying pan?"
My thought is that the steak is not healthily grilled in its own juice to keep it succulent on a piece of silver foil which is thrown away. Instead the steak is cooked in pan with cholesterol-filled old oil. Oil from the previously cooked food.
Maybe no oil. That's why it is burned.
I had not realised until now that I could cook. I can serve up a delicious soft, thick, succulent fillet steak, doused in soy sauce before cooking, which adds flavour to the juice and keeps the steak moist.
My host continues his interrogation-cum-instruction, relentlessly,
"But, if you cook a steak in a frying pan, a big thick steak like that, in order to cook it through to the middle, you end up burning it on the outside?"
"Yessa." The waiter happily agrees that the restaurant will burn the steak. He explains, "We don'ta have grill - enough."
By now the restaurant is nearly empty.
Unlike Fellini, where they clear empty tables and lay for the next meal, with gleaming cutlery and fan-shaped pink napkins, the table next to us is forlornly empty, just a cream-coloured cloth, hinting that it's time to go. Overtime.
My host is slumped, too drunk to stand up and drive home. Or maybe my company is so entrancing he can't bear to say goodbye. Maybe he wants to have the last word, with the waiter, yet again.
Operatic Intrigue
I finally find the courage to ask my question. Why is the ex-wife of my favourite restaurant owner running this restaurant near his and why did they split up?
Instead I manage to ask an apparently straight-forward question, which does not even reveal that I know anything about the local restaurants. I ask, "Who owns this restaurant?"
To my amazement and delight, and pride, my subtle, innocent-sounding question extracts every secret.
The waiter says proudly, "My wife owns this restaurant. My wife and I run it. She does cooking. I am head waiter."
Ah. So – are they joint owners or is it in her name? No matter, quite enough to fuel endless speculation and romantic rumour to entertain us over dinner. Is that why she split from her husband? Was she already having an affair with the young waiter? I could be wrong, but it’s a more exciting intrigue if I presume she was with the young waiter before the split, and that relationship caused the split. Much more thrilling than that she separated from her husband and met and married the waiter afterwards, which is not a sufficiently exciting story to enliven a single espresso.
My middle-aged, paunchy host assessed the young, slim waiter, raises an eyebrow, takes a deep breath, nods, leans forward and whispers knowingly, cynically, "He's a very good-looking young man."
Strange how merely saying that the waiter is 'good-looking' carries so much innuendo. It implies that he has sex-appeal but nothing else. No money. No brains. We can imagine a complete Don Giovanni comic opera scenario. She has not merely married a good-looking man after divorcing. No. An attractive married women has jumped into bed with a 16-year-old penniless young waiter, but her 100 year-old-husband, a terminally-ill millionaire with a walking stick, receives an anonymous note. I have mixed up Othello with Don Giovanni, but who cares. Never let the truth interfere with a good classic plot. Conflict and comedy.
Our centenarian suspiciously returns, staggering in to the next room to surprise them. She sings to forestall her husband in the living room. Meanwhile, the half-dressed young man escapes through the bedroom window. He limps off wearing one boot. I imagine the wife has waist-length black hair and waves a giant wooden spoon whilst cooking singing soprano.
The waiter says, "My wife not here tonight."
Pity.
Still, that figures. Last time I came here the food was brilliant. I bet she is a better cook than whoever made our food tonight. Maybe some new chef can't cook. She would normally be in the kitchen supervising, watching the food, telling the 'chef' what to do. She is the chef or chief. She is the one who could decide whether it is worthwhile to throw away a ruined steak rather than upset a customer.
And/or they have one cook instead of two, so he is doing double the amount of cooking, hasn't time to watch the food, and the steak has been left too long whilst he is doing something else so it got overdone.
I remembered the my host had told me that he told the restaurant it was my birthday. It isn’t! A lie. I was flabbergasted. But they forgot to do anything for my birthday. My non-birthday. I am disappointed. Nothing worse than expecting to celebrate a non-birthday and then nobody sings Unhappy Birthday or Happy Unbirthday.
What can I do to avoid accusations of libel if I put this up on the Internet? Leave out the name of the restaurant. But anybody who knows where I live could infer which restaurant is mentioned and which restaurant owner.
My son says, 'Let them sue - it's good publicity for your writing. And for their restaurant.’
The burned steak is fair comment. They won’t be offended. It cannot insult them nor detract from their good reputation, if they had one. Any restaurant can have an off night. What matters is that they attempt to make amends. And they did – with the custard.
But none of this is true. I was not in the restaurant. I have never been on dating site. And my name is not Fanny.
I hope you think this untrue, unfunny story is true and funny. Please write and tell me you think it’s funny. Even if you don't think so.
