"What you want is pie"

This is what my eldest son said after he and I had had a celebratory posh meal together a few weeks ago. And I thought of these wise words yesterday.

Yesterday, we joined relatives for another posh meal. I've posted about this Fine Dining thing before, but it bears repeating. It was a lovely occasion; great company, beautiful weather, glorious surroundings etc. but the food was of the garden-on-a-dinner-plate variety: small portions of tiny little unidentifiable things which have to be explained. Like this:

Waiter (putting your plate in front of you. Here you have to imagine charming French accent): you have here a pâté of wild hare's trotters pickled in cognac, a purée of wild garlic and cucumber, a peanut soufflé with rose petals, a stuffed claw of pickled lobster, and a beetle nut jus.

Then you have to remember it all when he's gone, because he took away the menu an hour ago,  and you can't remember what you ordered.

As for jus, what's that all about? And whatever  happened to gravy? Good, old-fashioned English gravy. In a jug.

So, back to my son. He's right. What you want is pie. Straightforward, no-explanations-needed pie. And lots of gravy.

Never again...

...will I go for the "fine dining" experience. That's it. Over. Finished.

I've posted about this before, and it seems I never learn. I've posted about weird little garnishes and jus and little sprigs of this and that, and going home hungry at the end of it all. And I went back for more (why?) But on Tuesday, I took no.1 son for lunch, as a belated birthday celebration, and afterwards, I decided never again.

John is a foodie, and a great believer in visiting eating places that have been reviewed in the many periodicals he reads, and he suggested this one. It was nice enough; lovely friendly staff, and a pleasant atmosphere. But the dishes were so complicated that you needed a map and a book of instructions to find your way round them. What was this little trickle supposed to be? This tiny fragment? This colourful dot? Son's starter arrived in a wooden box, and had to be assembled in front of him, while he looked on, utterly bewildered. I can't remember what it was, but I know it involved a quail's egg.

Afterwards, he was scrupulously polite, and very sweet, but he did comment that "you just want your lunch, don't you?"  (It reminds me of the occasion when his sister was stressing about a dinner party she was giving. "Daisy, people just want pie," he told her.)

Quite.