As an un-closeted elitist, I have sometimes engaged in the wicked past-time of the upper classes, that delightful sport of regaling others (often captive dinner party guests who bring along incapacitated pets) with places you have been and dinners you have had. Perhaps you are familiar with it: the big ‘Walks I Have Taken, Meals I Have Eaten by We Who Traverse the Globe’ routine. As a proponent of the literary tradition of author, text, reader (ATR), I think it important to consider who is on the other end of this drivel—for example, there might be children in the audience. That is why I refer to the following almost anecdote as When Mayonnaise Barfed.
Prior to my dining experience at the divine Bistrot Bofinger in Paris, I had a singular dietary restriction- a mild dislike of capers. Or so I told people. My companions were the variety that ‘suggest’ delicacies from the menu before you have read it yourself. Your will to resist being told what to eat depends on whether you’ve had a long day of sightseeing or chosen to swill Poire Williams beneath Victor Hugo’s apartment. When the waiter/War Criminal came round, I dutifully enquired about le grand aioli, which up until then I had imagined as merely a condiment for paella. He assuaged me with words only used by wait staff in France: “ce n’est pas dangereux”.
Wrongy. In France, this cold emulsified sauce made of olive oil and garlic is typically served with fish soup consisting of five different fish, in this case all of them white. The celebration of summer took the form of a hurtling montage of gastro-poo. In short, the dish made a potage look like an orgasm. Now, bend your mind a bit more to imagine the prolonged cleansing effect such dreadful gobs of garlic can induce when consumed in one sitting. Perhaps a trou normand* or three would settle the stomach and extinguish the fumes? Alas, one can only labor so long in an effort to mask the anti-social nature of such a dish.
*palate cleanser, often Calvados or sorbet- or as they say in Mexico, the most civilized country in the US el hueco jaliscience a.k.a. tequila.
