Food for Thought

So I didn’t get any bacon and egg ice cream (it came with brioche that had green peppers, to which I told them I was allergic) and I probably could have lived without the sardine sorbet, but lunch yesterday at The Fat Duck was unquestionably the best meal of my entire life.

From the green tea and lime meringue cooked in liquid nitrogen at the table – the palate cleanser – to the salmon poached in licorice and roast foie gras, chamomile, almond, cherry and amaretto jelly (gelatin in Americanspeak), my two friends and I thought nearly every course of our tasting menu was better than the last. And though the menu might scream pretentious, none of the staff were. One of our waiters even discreetly advised us on which utensil to use (hey, what would you use for a parfait of pea puree, quail jelly, langoustine cream and foie gras?) without making us feel like idiots.

It was also a lesson in how much you eat with your eyes – something that, as I return to the diet (no, I didn't calculate points for the meal -- somehow I doubt "snail porridge" is among the 30,000 foods in the WW database) – I should keep in mind. Just after the palate cleanser come two tiny gelatin squares – one red, one orangey-yellow. You’re told one is beetroot and one is orange, and that you should eat the orange-colored one first. Surprise! It’s the beetroot one – made of golden beetroot, while the red one is blood orange. It’s the first of the restaurant’s many tricks – and treats.

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After months of talking about it (but not, alas, doing research), I finally bought a bike today in the hope that I will cycle to work enough times this year to recoup my several hundred quid. (And never mind what the catalog says -- it takes way more than 15 seconds to fold this puppy up). This being London, anyone care to bet on which happens first: I get killed or the bike gets stolen? I didn’t think it was a great sign when as I was walking the bike up Canonbury Lane (didn’t want to ride around Highbury Corner in the dark the first time) just by the block of council flats, one teenage boy nudged his friend and said: "Now, that’s a nice bike."