Come Dine With Me - 4 private houses in London
Not strictly a restaurant review since, err, it's not going to feature any restaurants and all of them are in the future, so it's not (yet) a review either. Let's call it a "Heads up of possibly interesting evenings involving food" post. This thread seems like a decent place to post it.
When the GLDHI and I were in Abruzzo earlier in the year for the aviation fuel tasting tour, our hosts invited us to join their CDWM group. There are four couples doing it, and the first dinner is tonight.
"We all go to each others' houses are fed and watered", Riccardo says. " We then write our scores on a piece of paper at the end of each evening and secret them away in a locked cash box (I keep the cash box, someone else keeps the key), until the end of the fourth dinner, when the scores are revealed. The prize? We all go out to dinner in December; the winners don't pay".
Like the idiots we are, we agreed to participate.
Idiots? Well yes; Riccardo is an excellent cook, as is Janet (50% of one of the other couples). Sean 2 (there are 2 Seans, one being married to Riccardo) is a bloody chef. Us? Well, we're ok cooks, but that's about it. You know how you can admire excellent musicianship without it being necessary to be a musician? That's us - with food/cooking.
We're going to lose. Badly.
"Wine counts, right?"
"Yes", Riccardo replies. "Wait, err, no. No, it doesn't".
"Huh, why not?"
"Because you have the best cellar"
"OK. So food doesn't count either then. Because you're a better cook than us."
Eventually, we gained agreement that wine does count.
Anyway, tonight is the first night. 19:30 in Islington. At Janet and John's (No, I'm not kidding; and yes, apparently they have heard the "joke" multiple times over their 25 year marriage).
Next up, Sean & Riccardo, followed by Sean & Paul, with us last.
Us last.
I've offered the GLDHI the following options for our evening, in descending order of preference:
1. We're desperately ill and can't host - or we emigrate just before
2. We get take away from Nandine and pass it off as our own
3. We cook something that we really know how to do - say a roast leg of lamb and pommes dauphinoise, with, err, steamed beans. Preceded by home made leek and potato soup, followed by, say, cheese.
She's countered by offering:
1. We really push the boat out and try to excel at something mind blowing and practise like hell between now and our date with destiny.
I sense we're a fair way apart in our thinking at the moment.
Anyway, that's in the future. For now:
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