Fine dining

OTHERWISE KNOWN AS POSH FOOD

Or food as theatre - see below:

Why did my thoughts turn to posh food? Well it’s our Golden Wedding Anniversary this year and Carole and Chris are coming to visit and it’s their Golden Wedding Anniversary year too, so I have been trying to organise a ‘posh’ dinner for when they are here. Fighting David’s prejudices here - waste of money, and not very wonderful food (they do tend to veer towards weird vegetables, shellfish and offal) - but even he has to admit that our night at Vue de Monde, courtesy of Leonie and Garry (see above) has been a talking point at many dinner parties. It’s proving to be difficult to find somewhere suitable that we can all afford and that isn’t booked up. David just queried why they would all be booked, but the point is that these places are very special and are for those very special occasions in life.

The food alone is not enough I have decided as I search for alternatives to the now very pricey Vue de Monde. Some of the top food restaurants really don’t have very memorable looking places - some of them have the same polished floors and industrial chic look of thousands of cafes dotted around Melbourne and the suburbs. But you would expect to at least have upholstered chairs. And basements which are sort of prison like also seem to be a theme that doesn’t attract. Anyway it’s sort of interesting to consider whether the food or the ambience is the all important thing. Normally I think the food would have priority - if you’re going out for a meal with friends and family for example. Or when we are on holiday - we are then much more price conscious and also much more focussed on experiencing good food. And of course one expects the food to be good. But for the special occasion meal I think you need something more - something over the top, even if it makes you feel slightly uncomfortable.

“Food is one part of the experience. And it has to be somewhere between 50 to 60 percent of the dining experience. But the rest counts as well: The mood, the atmosphere, the music, the feeling, the design, the harmony between what you have on the plate and what surrounds the plate.” Alain Ducasse

Yes it’s a bit pretentious but I actually think he is right.

So here are the special occasion meals that I remember. They are not many.

Very possibly my first restaurant meal ever - in France at the age of about 13 in an Alsatian restaurant called Aux Armes de Colmar near the Gare du Nord. You see I remember all that detail - and I remember the tomato salad which was my food revelation and most likely set me on a lifelong love of cooking. I also remember the black coated waiters taking huge platters of choucroute through the restaurant that I vaguely remember as looking like the typical french bistro. (see above) This was not fine dining but it was an extraordinarily memorable occasion which influenced me enormously. I was blown away.
Our wedding night dinner at Quo Vadis. For this meal I have no memory whatsoever of what we ate. And this is partly true for all of my ‘special occasion’ meals. But of course I remember the occasion. I had married the love of my life - I mean how momentous is that? And thanks to Glyn we were both pretty drunk. So drunk we thought we would sober up by having a sherry in the bar. But I don’t think we disgraced ourselves nevertheless.
My fiftieth birthday at Paul Bocuse in Lyon. Well just outside Lyon. That’s it at the start of this article. I could almost swear that we sat at the table in the front of the picture. Somewhere I have a photo of me outside the restaurant - we were too shy to take a photo inside. I had a look but I cannot find that photo. And it was expensive - so expensive we framed the bill - and the menu too (well the menu cover). I really cannot remember much about the food - well I can remember the snails - the ‘free’ amuse bouche we got first - they were surprisingly delicious. But I completely remember the occasion - and so does David. We have dined out on little bits about it many times. There were so many little things to say - the wine waiter tasting our wine, Paul Bocuse sweeping through, the couple on the table next door as overwhelmed as us, the cheese trolley, the dessert trolley ... Very memorable and worth every penny.
La Fin de Siècle in Cavaillon. I almost didn’t include this because it’s not strictly fine dining - it was cheap - but it was fine dining. This time I do remember some of the food, but I also remember the presentation - it was all silver service. We found it in the Red Michelin when we were staying in the Luberon with the boys, Dionne and Patricia and Fred. It was a truly memorable experience because the food was so unexpectedly excellent and it was so cheap - Dom kept going on about how cheap it was - “how can they do it?” It was also special in that it may have been one of our first opportunities to take them somewhere like this. We went back with Carole and Chris another year and the food was just as good, but somehow not as memorable. And we tried again - just the two of us - but it was closed. It’s still there though.