Dressing for dinner

The hotel is very pleased with its restaurant, which "retains the beauty of the gracious Victorian era". So pleased, in fact, that guests are asked to "compliment the setting by dressing appropriately for the evening". Meaning no jeans, track suit bottoms (as if!), trainers, T-shirts or polo shirts.

Which would be much easier to accept if the place wasn't painted like a (modern era) pub, complete with "witty aphorisms" all over the walls. The food, too, is the wrong side of self-satisfied; the dinner menu begins with a message from the chef, stating his position on the use of local seafood and seasonal vegetables.

None of which seems to bother the assembled diners - all dressed appropriately - and all at least 2 full decades older than us.

Semantics for Breakfast

One piece of brie does not make a "selection of cheeses".

Well, I guess it does, kinda. But it's a limited sort of selection.

Attack of the Tartares

Due to translation failures, I ordered steak tartare for lunch, mistaking it for another dish.

I was, consequently, surprised and disturbed to be presented with a lump of pale, mushy meat: clearly - stomach turningly - raw.

It was also surprisingly tender and tasty. I polished off the lot.

A long way from home

Just overheard from a neighbouring garden:

"Harrison, if you want a bath with a bath bomb in it, you have to come now."

When I was smaller, we hadn't heard of bath bombs. And the only Harrison I'd ever heard of was a Hollywood actor.

Last night's pizza for lunch

Well, that was the plan.

But it looked so appealing as I packed my lunch this morning that it didn't make it to lunchtime.

Much of it barely made it to the car, indeed.

So it'll be muesli cereal for lunch today.

Thai food is my generation's Indian

When I was little, roast dinners were a welcome feature of Sundays.

On Mondays the leftover meat would be made into something like rissoles (lamb), stir fry (beef), or - very occasionally - chicken curry. Now, this wasn't the type of curry we'd recognise these days - in fact, my friends laughed at me when I declined to go for a curry with them when my only experience was my mother's white-sauce-with-curry-powder added.

Tonight, we had the modern day equivalent; Thai curry made with red curry paste and coconut milk, the leftover chicken stripped from the carcass and stirred through at the last.

Whether my children will consider it identifiably, authentically Thai will have to wait, at least until they have been born.

In the aftermath of Easter egg wrapping

...I'm still craving chocolate.