Part One (else it will be a fucking Internet novel)
Vegetarian Beer Dinner
Wednesday September 26, 2007
I had been looking forward to this dinner for a few weeks; I hoped Janna wouldn't ruin it. Because I'm a good cattle herder, Kara, Janna and I arrived promptly at the Bigelow Grille at 8:40pm where we were then told by the stiff-lipped host that the 6:00 seating hadn't ended and we'd have to busy ourselves some other way for the next twenty minutes. First, we went outside where I was lectured ad nauseum about smoking by Kara and then we all complained about our shoes and wondered if the cute girl duo standing nearby were on a date. Then we sat in large chairs in the lobby with a wide table separating Janna and me from Kara. It was nice to have some distance for awhile. Then Janna had to pee. Then it was 9 so we took another stab at being seated but were shooed away again like flea-infested pound puppies.
Other people began arriving for the 9:00pm seating, so a few of us congregated in a small foyer outside of the Grille. I stood too close to the outside door, triggering the sensor to repeatedly engage the opening mechanism. Every 60 seconds there would be a loud whoosh followed by a blast of air. I maintained my stance until someone from another group politely wondered out loud, "Wow, I wonder if someone is standing too close to the door. That's awfully annoying."
Behind Janna, there was a small-framed man with a loose blazer hanging over his bones like a death shroud. His hair was forked in thick clumps, he had a sharp and thin nose and a lipless mouth jammed with serrated teeth. I was intrigued by this man and his close-set eyes and the way his eyebrows disappeared into the creases of his forehead when he dryly said to his companion that the hallway we stood in "smells just like the hotel in Tokyo!" I wanted to have his picture in the worst way.
Janna, whom I was determined to be nice to so I assumed the role of Sophisticated Dinner Erin for the eve, laughingly suggested that we use the old "camera-over-the-shoulder" maneuver, where I pretend like I'm taking a friend's photo but really I aim over their shoulder at my poor victim who happened to have the dumb luck of standing behind them. I laughed along with her and said, "Smile, Janna!" You know, insinuating that I was going to do it right then. Her face darkened and fell into a most unattractive scowl and she grunted, "Shut up!" I was very offended by her ignorance so I shouted that I wasn't being mean, I was merely feeding off what she had said. She sheepishly said, "Oh." I guess she's just so used to me insulting her?
By 9:15, the other diners had cleared out so we pushed our way into the restaurant. That asshole host was doing a fine job ignoring us as he went down his stupid reservation list and called names of people who weren't even there, instead of saying, "Hi, and your name is---?" A woman next to us asked him just that and he tersely answered that there were people seated at the bar as well, but then the logicality of her suggestion must have found a small brain cell to seep into, because he acquiesced and asked me for my name. He waved his pencil up and down the list until he spotted me.
"Oh yes, I already called you and you weren't here. Follow me."
I did not appreciate the snideness of his tone. We weren't there because he kept telling us to leave! We were right on the other side of the door; he could see us from his stupid hosting station! I hated him. Imagine how thrilled I was when I found out he was doing double duty as a server, too.
That asshole. The host/server, not Janna. Oh alright, Janna too.
Amuse bouche
Farmstead cheddar: rye bread puree, caramelized onion, apple butter
Kvass Bread Beer
A bevy of penguined waiters silently flitted around the twelve tables, decorating the area in front of each of us with a wine glass filled halfway with Kvass Bread Beer. Beer and I aren't really friends. We've given it the old college try in previous encounters, but it's always fake, artificial, icy, like when you try to be friends with the person your 10th grade true love left you for and you talk to her about things that don't matter, like the jeans you just bought at Express or in which park pavilion your tongue won the blowjob Olympics but internally your heart is petrifying and if someone happened to slide a piano wire inside your clenched fists, you'd wrap it around that ho's neck faster than she spreads her legs for her dealer.
In other words, if Beer ran for president and won, I'd move to Canada.
Scott from the East End Brewing Company came out from the kitchen and welcomed everyone for coming, and recited a bunch of Really Important Things that I could not hear because the cacophony from the bar was blowing out the drum of my left ear; Kara and Janna appeared enrapt though which made me wonder if it was really important at all. The waitstaff burst through the kitchen doors again, and slid little plates piled with cheese castles under our noses. Scott said that the chef, Kevin Sousa, would be out momentarily to give us an explanation of the Amuse bouche and the first course.
"That means don't eat it yet," I hissed at Janna, who rolled her eyes and visibly bristled. Wouldn't it be fun if Janna had feathers? I'd ruffle them all the time.
There was a man my family and I met in Europe when I was eleven. His name was John and he taught me one of the most important life lessons that I know of even to this day, the tenor of which your God, church, college, or the blind sage that lives behind the dumpster in the park could never comprehend matching. This nugget of knowledge has pulled me from the claws of destruction and devastation more times that I'm comfortable admitting.
If it doesn't taste good, put cheese on it.
I might have never eaten Spaghetti O's again had I not known that secret.
Using my advanced math and reasoning skills, I can brilliantly deduce that if a dish is centered around cheese, I know I'll enjoy it. And I did. I wished it was larger, though. I hoped Janna wouldn't eat all of hers so I could swipe it like an orphan with a porridge-allergy, but that was wishful thinking.
An interesting thing to note is that the Kvass Bread Beer was the only beer I was able to completely down. Probably because I like bread. However, it took me all the way into the second course to do so, after collecting two other glasses of beer. I was pleased to be the only diner with an ale armada.
Kara and Janna knocked back their beers like the booze floozies they are. I hoped they wouldn't detract from the sophisticated and, how you say, refined example I was trying hard to set, by sitting upright and, like, spreading a napkin out on my thighs, which were not slung open like those of a benched baseball player, I swear. Maybe once or twice, but I caught myself.