I have always found eating a very functional thing, like dressing or washing so I wouldn’t say I have any feelings about it. Going to restaurants has never been something that particularly interests me, and neither is cooking. For me food is no more than refuelling (and something that often slips my mind).
Because of this I don’t have many particularly strong memories about meals. There was a Christmas dinner that sticks in my mind because it wasn’t until 3pm which I felt at the time (and still feel now) was much too late to have lunch. What we ate or who was there, I am not clear about.
After a lot of thought there is something, I remember, food wise from the cruise ship days. We had the same menu as the guests which meant the dinners were on rotation, we had the same menu every week for months on end meaning that we got to know exactly what we wanted before looking at the menu. The table we always sat at was the circular one in the middle, it was the biggest table and closest to everything on the buffet.
It fell on ‘Island Night’ which was our outdoor deck party. The band played and we had to dance with the guests from around 8pm till midnight. The thing with parties is that they are only fun if you want to be there. Doing this week in, week out for years, it quickly became one of my least favourite things. In fact, it got to the point I used to ask to be sent to the Alaskan cruises just to avoid having to go through the ordeal as it would be too cold.
The chicken kiev though was a high point. We would gather as a team and everyone ordered the same although inevitably everything would be delivered separately along with a glass of free wine, once tasted it became obvious why the wine was free. The cutting of the chicken was as much of a performance as the cutting of a wedding cake and as everything came out of the kitchen one at a time, we went through it several times a night because as the knife came down, the dinner would explode.
The buttery liquid inside would squirt out at speed often in several directions and we had to be ready to avoid being splattered. We would hold napkins in front of us and hide behind them until the impact had been made, then emerging to survey the damage. Then another kiev would be presented to one of our table mates and the process would be repeated. It was tricky to get the first one as there would be so many interruptions to eating, it would be cold before you finished.
I remember asking the chef how it was the velocity was quite so strong, but he didn’t seem to understand what I was on about. Perhaps he didn’t know either, it remains one of life’s great mysteries.
Unseaworthy 