Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
The Dinner Party
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
Dear Sweetheart,
Tonight, I barely survived a faculty dinner party organized by the school district. Before I suppress the memory, I want to tell you about it.
As the guests gathered, we ate cheese balls impaled on toothpicks. Arranged upright, they looked like little skulls on medieval pikes guarding a castle. An omen.
The house had a Julia Child aroma. Sipping a second-rate French cabernet in the kitchen, the hostess seemed to be hiding out, avoiding her guests. Another omen.
As we settled ourselves around the dining room table, a white-haired, professorial-looking gentleman in tweed coat and corduroy slacks introduced himself as the spouse of one of the science teachers. He said he taught music at the nearby community college. That was the last pleasant sound he made.
As the salad course was served, he started to regale us about their recent vacation to France. His tone was haughty, assuming centerstage as if they were the only Americans to ever tour Europe. Fifty shades of boasting. Sitting across from him, I wonder if he could hear my teeth grinding.
His monologue began in the town of Amboise. Only a few blocks from the Chateau Royal d’Amboise, the Restaurant L’Ilot offers a chalkboard menu-of-the-day. To start, a lobster salad so fresh it was still snapping, he extolled. A veal entrée baked in filo dough. For dessert, poached pear and grape tart draped with dollops of whipped cream. I swear, before continuing, I think he actually waited for applause.
Food and wine bores do have their purposes. While the other guests were preoccupied with their food, taking in the wall art or—for all I know—mentally composing resignation letters, I noted some places for us to look into.
He told us that in the Loire Valley near the famed gardens at the Chateau Villandry, down a one-lane country road, L’Etape Gourmand served him a farm-fresh luncheon in a rustic-elegant setting. Martha Stewart farmhouse chic. The tender, flaky trout almondine was, according to him, a pinkish-hued salmon color. Like a French baby after a warm bath.
As he recounted, the view from their table window overlooked calming agricultural pastures. Checking my urge to ask him if had any plans to put out to pasture, I buttered a piece of French bread.
In Nantes, he remembered the savory gallette at Creperie Heb Ken, made with Breton sausage, scrambled eggs, Emmental cheese and candied onions, wrapped burrito-style in a buckwheat crepe. French tearoom atmosphere with an owner-hostess sporting an inventively tied scarf and print blouse. Sound good?
At the Nantes Art Museum, the museum café served an artfully plated luncheon of white fish and artichoke heart mélange presented on a golden bed of Israeli couscous floating on a red pepper sauce. Painting himself the food and art aficionado, he smugly insisted the luncheon was a still life begging for an artist to memorialize it.
Just as dessert arrived, he served up a food brag so overworked and cliché that my gag reflex lurched. Can you believe it, he discovered a neighborhood café in Paris patronized exclusively by the locals.
That’s when I started daydreaming about stabbing myself with a table knife….
