Long time, no Blog?
Yeah, it’s been a while.
I’ve been really busy the last few weeks with my Mum coming over from Belfast two weekends ago, working most weekday evenings and heading down to Bath for my Dad’s 60th Birthday last weekend.
So, here I am, back at the keyboard.
Dad’s 60th birthday went well I guess.
We went to one of Jamie Oliver’s restaurants in Bath, the rather simply put “Jamie’s Italian”.
It is one of several identically-named eateries scattered across some of the more pleasing parts of the United Kingdom – you know, Bath, Cambridge, Guildford and the like – although I see there are plans afoot to open one in Glasgow. I didn’t say anything.
The restaurant puffs its chest out as a destinataion for “fine dining at affordable prices”, so, being a lover of Italian food, I was quite looking forward to this one.
We had booked a table for fourteen and had all pre-selected from the exquisite looking, if somewhat hard to comprehend, Christmas menu.
The food was flawless, when you could get your hands on it that is.
The starters - “Seasonal Meat & Vegetables Antipasti” – came along on three two-foot-long wooden planks placed in the middle and at either ends of the long dinner table, and much plate-passing up and down the table ensued.
I'm afraid the share-three-planks-between-you format didn't work for me. No.
Okay, it's not as bad as a Pizza Hut buffet on a bad day in Plymouth, but with elbow room already at a premium, I don't think its condusive to fine dining, so-to-speak, to have to ask Bobby-down-the-row to top your plate up with two more slices of proscuitto, when you actually want four, but you don't want to fend off accusations of 'who ate all the ham' later in the evening.
It was quite pleasing when mains and desserts came along and we reverted to the more traditional format of one plate per person, without so much of a sniff of a wooden serving plank in sight.
Interwoven between each course, we were all treated to some live singing. Dad.
No sooner had the starters arrived, when he burst into song and started firing round songsheets like a card-dealer in Vegas and all were encouraged, bullied even, to join in and sing. Some other guests joined in to.
The singing petered out as Dad’s voicebox got hoarser, and Mum then presented Dad with a surprise 60th birthday cake, a fantastic spectacle. A delicious raspberry sponge and cream affair with two guitars and a song-sheet iced on for good measure. Oh the irony.
Dad made a brief speech and we made for the exits soon after to meet up in the nearby Brown’s Brasserie for drinks at about 9.30pm.
I stayed to the not-so-bitter end - about 12.30am - and got to bed for about 1.30am I guess for the 140 mile trip home the next day.
It was a lovely night and I take my hat off to Mum for organising such a fantastic evening.
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