Food Porn or How the Rich People Live

[susandennis]

I have been working like a dog to clear the decks for a 10 am conf call. Which I figured out at 10 am was actually at 2 pm. Good thing it's Friday. I figure now is a good time to break and record the adventures of last night.

My Dinner At Herbfarm... Or the most uses of 'amazing' in one entry ever!

Turns out it was dinner theater. Dinner was at 7. We walked out at 11:30. 1/3 of the time was spent in between stuff. 1/3rd of the time was spent eating and 1/3 of the time was spent hearing about the food... what it was, where it came from (in excruciating Portlandia detail) and how it had been prepared.

We were 12 in a private room which was great. The main dining room held about 40 people in probably 15 groups. We went in there to hear the invocation - the chef told about the food, the wine person told about the wine, the owner told about the joint and introduced the entire staff.

Then back to our little room which was really just perfect and amazing cozy. The attention to detail was amazing - detail in everything from the place cards to the menu booklets to the table arrangements. We had one guy, Barry, who was with us all evening explaining every course, making sure we had everything we needed seconds before we needed it. If you left to go pee, he'd take your plate back 'to keep it warm' and bring it back when you returned - I mean the minute you entered the doorway. It was a little freaky.

The food was actually amazingly amazing. And delicious. It was tiny bites of tiny food in amazing sauces plated artfully in specific dishes. I finally figured out that they must look at their service ware and then use what pieces they have available to determine what to make. A teeny tiny pitcher for the broth that went over the spoonful of sorbet... etc.

It was all pretty amazing. Towards the end, it took on kind of a Saturday Night Live skit-ish tint. Probably it was the 48 different wines I had had but I was finding it pretty hard to giggle. The chef - who looked to be about 14 (he had earlier been introduced as the youngest chef at a 5 star restaurant in the country) - came in to describe the cheese plate and noted that the teeensy weensy berries were some he had found earlier that morning while out walking his dog. I tried so hard not to picture them sauteed in dog pee...

In thinking back over the various courses, while they were all amazing, they were also just the right amount. I'm not sure more of any of them would have added anything positive to the experience. The wines were delicious. Each course had its own. For a couple of the courses I tried the non-alcoholic drink option which was also very good.

Midway through the thing, I decided that I really wanted to be a regular. But, now I think it was a marvelous once in a lifetime experience. I may feel different one day but now I'm good with the memory... and the pictures.

One very special treat of the evening was to finally meet cinenaut who holds the record for following me the longest. He first found me before I started this journal! He first found me when I was doing my Kingdome picture of the day series in 2000. We've almost met several times. His office - for the past few years has even been less than a mile from here... Last night we finally got face to face - quite fun.