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...but I feel like there should be another German word for the feeling of uncomfortable awareness that a piece of good fortune which has come your way is probably at another person's expense.
A week or so ago I realised that it might be a good idea to make some restaurant bookings for my holiday, and was slightly surprised to discover that there's a pub about three miles from Whitstable with a Michelin star. I was rather less surprised to discover that they were fully booked for the whole week, but in a spirit of optimism I said yes please when they asked if I would like to be notified of any cancellations. And on Wednesday I got a 'phone call asking whether lunch that day was too short notice. I do feel a bit bad for the person whom I would guess got pinged, but not nearly bad enough to stop me enjoying the meal...
...which is what I got as far as writing before my taxi arrived. And the meal was indeed lovely. Perhaps not quite Michelin star-worthy throughout, but the high points were very high. Of particular note were all three amuses bouches - a poached oyster which convinced me that it's not always sacrilege to cook them, a cheese biscuit with the texture of air held together with the platonic ideal of crunchiness, and best of all, a perfectly seasoned roll of pulled pork wrapped in the finest sliver of crackling. Also extraordinary was the halibut fillet with crab bisque, where the fish was the perfect example of getting some really fresh fish and not doing too much with it, and the bisque was rich and warming and comforting, with distinctive but not overpowering notes of saffron and fennel.
Afterwards, feeling just on that cusp between replete and overfull, it seemed like a good idea to enjoy the walk along the coast back to Whitstable. I had good weather for it, and not too many people, but I found that rather than walking off the meal I was starting to feel more and more uncomfortable and nauseous. Within an hour or so of getting back to my cottage it was clear that this was less "I ate a bit too much too quickly" and more "guess I've got food poisoning then." I'm inclined to suspect that it was a delayed reaction to the attempts to eat my own body weight in raw oysters over the course of the week rather than the meal immediately preceding, but who knows. At any rate, I had a pretty unpleasant 36 hours or so. Today I'm feeling physically recovered, but the symptoms were sufficiently similar to a bad hangover that I'm now fending off waves of anxiety about anything inappropriate I might have done in a drunken state, and the message that no such state occurred doesn't seem to be getting through to my hindbrain.
I had a really good first half of my holiday, so I'm not going to complain too much, but it would definitely have been more refreshing without this.
A week or so ago I realised that it might be a good idea to make some restaurant bookings for my holiday, and was slightly surprised to discover that there's a pub about three miles from Whitstable with a Michelin star. I was rather less surprised to discover that they were fully booked for the whole week, but in a spirit of optimism I said yes please when they asked if I would like to be notified of any cancellations. And on Wednesday I got a 'phone call asking whether lunch that day was too short notice. I do feel a bit bad for the person whom I would guess got pinged, but not nearly bad enough to stop me enjoying the meal...
...which is what I got as far as writing before my taxi arrived. And the meal was indeed lovely. Perhaps not quite Michelin star-worthy throughout, but the high points were very high. Of particular note were all three amuses bouches - a poached oyster which convinced me that it's not always sacrilege to cook them, a cheese biscuit with the texture of air held together with the platonic ideal of crunchiness, and best of all, a perfectly seasoned roll of pulled pork wrapped in the finest sliver of crackling. Also extraordinary was the halibut fillet with crab bisque, where the fish was the perfect example of getting some really fresh fish and not doing too much with it, and the bisque was rich and warming and comforting, with distinctive but not overpowering notes of saffron and fennel.
Afterwards, feeling just on that cusp between replete and overfull, it seemed like a good idea to enjoy the walk along the coast back to Whitstable. I had good weather for it, and not too many people, but I found that rather than walking off the meal I was starting to feel more and more uncomfortable and nauseous. Within an hour or so of getting back to my cottage it was clear that this was less "I ate a bit too much too quickly" and more "guess I've got food poisoning then." I'm inclined to suspect that it was a delayed reaction to the attempts to eat my own body weight in raw oysters over the course of the week rather than the meal immediately preceding, but who knows. At any rate, I had a pretty unpleasant 36 hours or so. Today I'm feeling physically recovered, but the symptoms were sufficiently similar to a bad hangover that I'm now fending off waves of anxiety about anything inappropriate I might have done in a drunken state, and the message that no such state occurred doesn't seem to be getting through to my hindbrain.
I had a really good first half of my holiday, so I'm not going to complain too much, but it would definitely have been more refreshing without this.
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Date: 2021-11-19 06:13 pm (UTC)From:no subject
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