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In Weekly 21, I prejudged the indifferent quality of the finger food that is
traditionally served at the opening of the PAN art fair. Fair's fair, and so
I am delighted to inform you that this year the munchies were not too bad at
all. The late afternoon saw trays being wheeled in stacked with at least eight different bite-size snacks featuring plenty of purees, fish particles and meaty bits. These audibly met with acclaim, as indeed did the main course, which came in the shape of a large half-shell on a plate which had cleverly been wedged in a dollop of mashed potato to keep it from wobbling. A second dollop of mashed potato had been placed inside the shell by way of a miniature moat at the heart of which morsels of different kinds of fish and a couple of triathlon shrimp were having an almost-swim. Some of the fish struck me as slightly undercooked, but then I'm certainly no expert and perhaps that had been the idea all along. I recalled the sashimi I had been served in Japan, some of the bits in which had definitely been al dente and then some, but then those bits were supposed to be rare. Also I have a personal aversion to mashed potato, but in this type of situation it would of course be unfair to base one's judgment on one's own likes and dislikes. I remember thinking, "Oh dear": given the right set of unfavourable conditions, the odour, temperature and degree of readiness could, after all, combine to have undesirable side effects. In fact, I think I actually consciously decided to throw caution to the wind and give it a whirl. It wasn't quite the same as the trial tasting sessions for which the Romans used their inferiors, but in the event of my being subsequently struck down with a serious disorder, this would be the only way of getting my guests to belatedly admit to having suffered any nasty side effects as well. After all, no matter how certain you are as to what brought something on, you'll seldom say it out loud, especially not if you were someone's guest in the first place.  This main course was not served at the opening of this year's PAN art fair. Rather, it was created in the kitchens of the Park Restaurant's prestigious in-house Brasserie. They were kind enough to serve it to me at my booth. The adjacent self-service restaurant which had prepared an array of mouth-watering stir-fried pasta dishes the previous year was closed for reasons which remained undisclosed, in addition to which I was not in the mood to fetch my dinner at the food area which had been specially set up for exhibitors, and which if one is unlucky tends to remind one of a soup kitchen. I had innocently forgotten that the speciality restaurant likes to wield nouvelle cuisine standards, something which translates into rather wispy-looking main courses. However, I can be bold when I put my mind to it, and so, having witnessed the arrival of my rather forlorn looking plate, I dashed off to the centre field area of the exhibition, where salmon and oysters were served as well as delectable miniature Italian rolls which could well have been baked by members of the indigenous population living beyond the tree line in the Abruzzi mountain range, and if rolls like that are up for grabs in the middle of a vast hall in an exhibition centre in southern Amsterdam, of course you instantly realise that the cost of baking them can only be negligible compared with the army of people, motor vehicles and aeroplanes having been deployed to ship them in, so why should I care when someone called out that the price of my two rolls was five guilders? And although they most commendably remonstrated, I was adamant: if I was to have the rolls, it was only fair that they should have their fiver. The lacquered duck, if that's what it's called, was still lukewarm when I returned from my foray. It tasted alright; in fact, I detected something foie gras-y about it, and although I have no idea whether that should be so, it didn't bother me. I did wonder, however, whether the poor bird had been a participant in a brawl. I knew from experience that duck could be a wonderful pink inside, but this particular specimen also had some black and blue blotches on it. Once I had got to this point, however, I was no longer feeling audacious enough to lodge a complaint, in addition to which there was always the possibility of the chef giving me pitying looks and explaining that this was, in fact, his run-up to a Michelin star. And who knows, perhaps everything was as it should have been. |