Feeding the uneducated palate

“You’re drinking liquid with liquid!?” The wine expert was shaken, even stirred.

“Well, it’s my wife you see,” I began. “She has this book group and they…” The verbal shovel with which I was about to dig us a hole was grasped by more resolute hands.

“Two soups, two wines—one red, one white. That’s the rules of the game. Now I want you to tell me which wines to buy. I’ve never touched a drop in my life. I want cheap, preferably with screw tops,” my wife asserted.

“We are a cork-only establishment, madam,” sighed our helper, realizing he had now been trapped in his lair by a couple of wine neanderthals. We were at Pasture Ridge Estates— the County’s first naturally vined, transfat free, zero carbon, non-exploitative estate winery—and cork-only as well. Maybe we should just have gone to the LCBO.

“Perhaps I could help if Madam told me what seasonings go in the soups…”

My wife stuck to her guns. “The pea soup’s flavoured with pepper and carrots,” she said; “and it’s pretty darn good.”

“Only pepper?” our inquisitor retaliated. “No lemongrass or coriander? Then I could have matched the taste to the wine. You just give me pepper, I have no palate to work with.

“And pea soup with carrots. That is a fundamental violation of the Geneva Cooking Convention.”

I lightheartedly pointed out that it could be worse—we weren’t serving his wine with baked beans, and we could always cover the bottles with paper bags when company arrived. My remarks hung heavy in the air for a few seconds before clattering onto the floor. An eternity later, and some $40 poorer, we left, but with our dignity in shreds.

“I don’t know a Pinochet Noir from a Topo Gijio, and I don’t care,” said my wife defiantly. I assured her that my sporadic tippling skills could guide us through any wine sophistication forest that we happened to wander into. “Just ask for the Chateau Demorestville Canard Enfant and you’ll be fine,” I said, recalling the words of the English oenophile Horace Rumpole. “And I’ll help pour at your book club: just put the ice cubes in the white wine, not the red. And if anyone asks about the bouquet, just say it has a ‘hint of grape with a mellow afterbite of marshmallow and mushroom manure.’”

I’m writing this before the book club meets, so you’ll have to imagine your own outcome. In any event, I’m using the incident to lead into these questions. Aren’t there more people out there who share our lack of sophistication? Is there enough promotion of County food and drink services that cater to the ‘untutored’ palate? Wouldn’t it be nice to be better informed about the County’s best ‘ordinary’ food and drink?

I’m not advocating for a ‘Grub Trail’ of some sort; I’d just like more intelligence to bubble up. For instance, I would like to know where to find the biggest, greasiest breakfast served at the lowest price with the best service over the longest period. I would speak up for Kris’s Cafe in Rossmore and the Harbour View Restaurant in Picton. And if we extended the boundaries of the County a tad, I would definitely have to include McDonuts (on Road 49 on the Tyendinaga reserve) for its number two special (four dollars for a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich with coffee, together with all the free background tobacco smoke you can inhale). But I’m sure there are many other places that I don’t know about.

And how about our Wellington eateries? Wouldn’t it be nice to consult a collective intelligence report on the Wellington Grill (my take: always generous on the meat and gravy, pass up the cole slaw); the Plaza (seek Greek, pray for baclava, settle for rice pudding) and the Sandbanks Grill (always the Duneburger, best cold draft beer anywhere, bring back fresh cut fries).

And where is the best place to have a straightforward cup of fresh brewed coffee where the milk can’t be frothed; replete with a generous idle time allowance and plenty of old newspapers? Time for seasoned vets to spill the beans. I think there is a public out there waiting to be told.

And that’s just a start. We could collect our wisdom concerning our pizzerias, our taverns, our farmstands, our french fries, our fudges, our ice creams and our homemade soups and pies. And, for that matter, our church and school dinners, our teas and bake sales; and our fair fare.

I know, I know, one of the County’s other weekly newspapers has a ‘best rustproofing’ and ‘best yoga studio’ list of awards that includes food service. I’m talking about something much more comprehensive. But I’m not proposing to do the legwork. That’s up to you.

And if you do, I have one useful piece of advice for you. Never serve liquid with liquid. It’s a little piece of gastronomic knowledge that I picked up some time ago.

David Simmonds’s writing is also available at www.grubstreet.ca.