Food Porn

Last night The Man and I had dinner at an astonishingly expensive place, to celebrate his natal day, the anniversary of which was actually last weekend. But last weekend we were in the midst of children and grandchildren, each with his/her own food idiosyncrasies, so strawberry shortcake with gobs of whipped cream at the kitchen table was as good as it got on the actual day. Delicious ahi, too, if I do say so, pridefully.

Well! Last night at Saison it was all wine pairings (all French, mostly white, largely heaven-sent)and broths (or do we say infusions?) and foam and teeny weeny pieces of fish, looking like a lesson in sushi, only prettier than those plastic things you see in the windows of Japanese restaurants. Here's what we started out with: wood-smoked caviar from the Delta, eaten with one of those dear tiny caviar spoons. Later on we had something called "heartbreads", which was eaten with a long toothpick. There were many, many other artfully plated courses.

I liked everything but the rabbit. I didn't actually dislike the rabbit, I just didn't want to eat it, even though it was chopped and minced and stuffed inside an improbably green cabbage leaf like a wee sausage - that is to say, unrecognizable as a bunny. The Man is a stalwart in situations like that. He manfully ingested both of our petite portions.

That's the thing. The portions are a step up from miniscule. I actually remembered to go on Yelp to check out the verbose foodies' reactions to the restaurant and managed to get both scared and confused. Scared, because several people had written tragically about how much they had wanted to like the place, even though the wine pairings weren't included in the prix fixe but cost an additional $88 per person. I also came away from Yelping with the impression that menu items could be ordered individually, which is most definitely not the case. Then there were several complaints about leaving the feast still hungry. That did not happen last night. I only took one bite of my popcorn ice cream and I brought my entire puff pastry wrapped cheese item home, wrapped up in a tinfoil swan.

We had a lot of fun with the food (twist the head off the Monterey prawn then thoroughly clean fingers with lemon-scented towel) and even more with the wine. We both felt like we had eaten far more than we could reasonably digest, but neither of us is a barfer, so we tossed and turned all night, trying to find a pressure-less spot for the grumbling tummies. We even saw someone there that we knew. We could hear each other talk and the music was 70's folk-rocky, pleasantly forgettable tunes, except for the Eagles. Really?