This week’s column is brought to you by my sister-in-law, a self-identified ‘foodie’. In addition to being a foodie, she is a traveller, and this week, she’s in Copenhagen.
The other day she posted a menu of the meal she was about to enjoy and it got me to pondering the whole foodie thing. The thing I was pondering was, are high end restaurants just pushing these menus in order to see how far they can take the foodie before they balk and push the plate away?
The menu my sis-in-law posted was an eight course tasting menu and prices were absent. I have found that prices being absent usually means don’t eat here if you didn’t bring a sack of money. I mean the local fast food emporium tells you what you’re paying for those chicken nuggets. Not so at this Copenhagen establishment.
The menu begins with “Radish with salted green strawberries”. A radish slice, with an unripe strawberry that for some reason has been salted. Okay.
Next we have “greens and herbs from Korgerup”. Krogerup is an area near Copenhagen and we can only assume that their greens are superior. These greens were served with roasted seaweed. Can I get some Thousand Island dressing on that bowl of weeds?
Third on the menu is Lobster Claw with raspberries. Lobster claw? Yum. With raspberries? No. Garlic. Always garlic. And butter.
Next up, how about some raw lamb? Not your run of the mill raw lamb, but wrapped in perilla leaves. Perilla leaves, according to Wikipedia, taste grassy with notes of anise or licorice. It’s from the mint family so I guess this is a riff on the old lamb roast with mint sauce. But it’s a riff that has veered off in a direction I’m not sure I can get on board with.
Menu item number five, courgettes with smoked egg yolks. It turns out, the courgette is a fancy word for zucchini. Now my memory of zucchini is running to hide as my neighbour came down the street toting a ten-pound zucchini he was just hoping to give away to an unsuspecting friend.
“Hide! Here comes Gary with another zucchini!” would echo down the back lane.
I guess if I’d known I could serve it with smoked egg yolks, I would have come out of my basement. I’m lying. I wouldn’t.
Now we get to the heart of the menu, with raw grilled lobster tail with summer flowers. Question, how can something be raw and grilled at the same time? And again, chefs of the world. Garlic. Not summer flowers. Garlic.
Moving on to the pre-dessert we have raspberries from Rokkedyssegaard, another region/town near Copenhagen. Perhaps the chef had raspberries left over from his raw lobster delight. These, he is serving up with hazelnut milk. Never milked a hazelnut myself.
Finally, just in case you were thinking you could possibly choke back this menu, the meal closes with fish ice cream — Rausu Kombu ice cream with Royal Belgian Caviar. So that’s seaweed ice cream with fish eggs. It’s sort of like Rocky Road, only with the delicious bits replaced with fish eggs.
And this is the point where I began to wonder if it was all a joke.
Do the servers sit back in the kitchen and giggle?
“They’re eating it! They’re actually eating it! Fish ice cream! Who had dessert in the pool?”
But in the end, my sister-in-law enjoyed the meal tremendously, and I enjoyed mocking it tremendously,so it’s a win win.
To wrap this up, we go to the immortal words of Lyle Lovett, “After further consideration, please, if it’s not too late….. make it a cheeseburger.”
Well done. And hold the fish eggs.
