In Infamy

As a prominent member of the local citizenry, we are often invited to attend events of note in the region. Our Fridays and Saturdays are often filled with overcooked beef, twice-cooked chicken, pommes Lyonnaises, and such mainstays of the Gala Dinner playbook. Tonight, however, we received a meal that so far exceeded our expectations of the institutional jacket-and-tie dinner that it shall surely live on in memory for some time.

The backdrop was the Miss Oktoberfest Ball, one of the signposts that warns of the looming Oktoberfest season. We contend that it says much about a community when said community endorses a nine-day bender, and we are most bemused by the annual proceedings. At the Miss Oktoberfest Ball, the charming young mistress who best represents the poise, intelligence, smile, and shapeliness of the area youth is selected -- not only to preside over Oktoberfest, mind you, but also the Santa Claus parade, perhaps a ploughing-contest or autumn fair, and sundry other crucial engagements.

Bingeman's is well-known in the locality as the premiere venue for large and exalted gatherings, due to its large size and, we wish to believe, its adjacent wave-pool. To serve a dinner at such an august function must take a great deal of time and effort to succeed, and the coordination of dozens of hard-working professionals. We look forward to seeing Bingeman one day muster the necessary tools.

We shall describe the fare as they were served: disjointedly, with no reference to the courses either before or after. We shall omit, however, the long pauses between them.

First course: Risotto

The look of the plate was somewhat akin to a small pile of dog's vomit, if the dog had eaten first a plant. On closer inspection, we learned that the foodstuff was in fact risotto, served atop a slice of roasted pepper squash, with a brunoise of lightly-cooked squash sprinkled about and a sage leaf and a shaving of parmesan cheese atop.

The slice of squash was cooked nicely, though its tough and bitter skin was inexplicably left on. The squash's relationship to the risotto was obscure at best, while the risotto was not completely without flavour, but unfortunately, that flavour was of glue. However, an interesting texture was gained by cooking part of the risotto to a mushy mass, and cooking part of it lightly so that hard grains of arborio made their presence known with every bite.

It was with hope for better things that the risotto was returned to the kitchen.

Second course: Salad

A fresh, clean salad of mesclun mix, balsamic vinaigrette, goat's cheese, and candied walnuts surely cannot fail, can it? In this case, no, we were quite appreciative of the salad. We do, however, question the company it keeps.

To the side of the salad, on each plate, sat a small cylinder of the following composition: fine egg noodles; shredded and cooked carrots; avocado; slime. The flavour, such as it was, hinted at the starchiness of the noodles and the rawness of the avocado, while the texture was equally surprising on the second bite as on the first. What process resulted in this monstrous concoction we dare not speculate, other than to note that it must have been either random, or malevolent. We might have discovered more on the third bite, had we dared take it.

Third course: Main

This was not some run-of-the-mill, lackaday event; this was the Miss Oktoberfest Ball! A source of pride and self-respect throughout Waterloo County! Why, it is quite synonymous with "gala dinner" out in our manusquire. We deduce the reasoning to have been: at that price, diners should receive both chicken and steak. Therefore, serve: chicken supreme, stuffed; steak, gravied; vegetables, steamed, unseasoned; and potatoes, scalloped, gravied.

The chicken promoted the one theme common to the evening, being both coated and stuffed with varieties of wallpaper-paste. The strange starchy textures did, however, provide a fascinating counterpoint to the rubbery skin and twice-cooked meat. Also swimming in the glue were the vegetables; on our plate, roughly half were almost completely raw, and the remainder were soggy and limp. Others at the table reported varying rations of the raw to the cooked.

But the chicken was also served on that staple of haute cuisine: a bed of steak. Indeed, the steak was small but toothsome; ours, though cooked to medium-well, was reasonably tender. However, the flavour was inexplicably combined with that of a gravy which had been liberally ladled over top. This gravy, obviously, could not have been created from the juices collected from the cooking meat; thus its ingredients were limited to corn starch, monosodium glutamate, and dirt.

Other diners at our table were not as lucky as we. The table was a pastiche of steak doneness options: a pleasant medium-rare, a daring medium, and in one unfortunate case, barely cooked at all. Indeed, our host for the night received a steak for which the cook, if indeed such a label can be applied, had felt the mere presence of open flame in the room would be sufficient for this piece of meat. It was quickly dispatched to the kitchen for a replacement, with some sharp words sent with it.

Even more inexplicable is the addition of gravy to the hefty wedge of scalloped potatoes. These were flavoured with some obscure seasoning, tentatively identified as Aromat, which ensured that no actual potato flavour would actually reach the diner's palate. With the gravy, they became a vaguely potato-textured chemical cocktail.

The servers' trays were nearly as heavy leaving the table as when they arrived. But Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never Is, but always To be blest.

Fourth course: Dessert

The arrival of the large, rectangular plates, attractively appointed with an assortment of sweetmeats, was something of a relief to our oft-offended eyes; however, we had learned to reserve our hopes, and were therefore no more disappointed than usual.

How often, we wonder, does the reader ask himself, "why are there so few instances of kiwi fruit being combined with chocolate?" We suspect that such a question does not cross the mind of the human in his natural environment; one is as like to ask, we think, "why are iced salmon drinks so rare nowadays?", or "here is the chicken; why have they neglected to add the hot, chocolate-covered gravel?" No, we think that the dipping of kiwi slices into chocolate is a kind of joke, a cosmic joke that reminds us that, even at these best of times, the escaped lunatics of Bedlam do occasionally design menus.

Even more disturbing was the other chocolate-dipped fruit on the plate. This was the fruit of the attractive plant sometimes known as the "Chinese Lantern". We were aware that this fruit is often called a "ground-cherry", but further research has revealed the alternate name of the fruit to be "bladder-cherry". We suspect that this name is the better descriptor; for upon biting into the chocolate-dipped offender, one was immediately assailed by a vile texture, equal amounts of sour and bitter, and, of course, chocolate, serving as a perverse reminder of what actual food tastes like.

On one side of the dipped fruits sat a couple of white chocolate truffles and a half-strawberry in a sauce that, despite the addition of coffee flavour, adequately carried on the mucilageonous theme. The chocolates, we can only assume, were produced off-site, and were included accidentally in a shipment of, say, pine needles and horsemeat; however, they were edible. The strawberry's flavour bore a passing resemblance to a pencil-eraser.

On the other side was what would, in a better world, have been a phyllo pastry cup containing a mascarpone mousse with a toffee shard. The toffee shard was crunchy and sweet; the cheese was lumpy and slightly grainy but palatable. However, our hosts could not countenance a successful component of the meal; they were forced to serve the phyllo uncooked, or perhaps cooked on another day and then liberally doused with dishwater; for the "cup" turned out to be several soft sheets of phyllo, rendered inedible by neglect or abuse.

Fifth course: Denouement

We were still reeling from the sinister parody of a human repast to which we had borne collective witness when the speeches began. Our evening was summed up in the following exchange:

[outgoing Miss Octoberfest]: I would like to thank you all so much for coming tonight.

[insolent wag at our table]: I would prefer a written apology.

For it is hard to imagine, without violating some international treaty or other, how a meal could be so far from the reasonable expectations of its recipients. Even with free access to such a meal, we felt cheated -- out of what, it seems hard to define, until one realises it was our very souls that were taken that night, in a flurry of culinary incompetence rarely seen.

De gustibus non est disputandem, as the Romans were wont to say; however, only if we find a single living human, possessed of his faculties, who could honestly enjoy such an abomination, will we retract a single jot of this review.

Until that day, Bingeman's, we remain your motral enemy. Fairly warned.