Absolution at the Chef's Table

Please don't make me finish the fish.

I was in Trieste for the weekend, a place I had always wanted to go — Habsburg splendour with Italian food plus a dollop of James Joyce. The city itself did not disappoint, but the hotel on the spectacular central square omitted to mention when we booked that the Damon Albarn-created band Gorillaz would be playing on Saturday night about two metres from our bedroom.

So we took the uncharacteristic step of making a booking at Trieste’s only two-star Michelin restaurant, which was a good distance from the concert. We chose the classic five-course menu and turned up promptly at 8.15. We sat at the chef’s table, which was a counter with a full view of the kitchen, covered in what I was assured was coloured lava.

The two chefs were unmistakable, as they were the only men in the kitchen not wearing chefs’ toques. Instead they both sported cockatoo-like quiffs (one blond, one dark) and Falstaffian bellies — they could have been bouncers, or very large pigeons. Everyone else in the kitchen was male, thin and white, apart from one man from South Asia who scurried in and out with the dirty dishes.

The menu offered no choices, which was fine, but when we attempted to choose a wine that the sommelier did not think would ‘resonate’ with our meal, we were respectfully but firmly encouraged to choose the one he recommended. This was made from the Malvasia grape and had top notes of diesel. When I commented on this, our charming waiter told me it had been aged in a terracotta amphora. He refused to put it in an ice bucket because, he explained, by the fifth course it would taste better at room temperature. When I ventured to disagree, there was a deep sigh, and a whispered conversation with the blond cockatoo, who shook his head in a way that conveyed the deepest disappointment. It was becoming clear that we were not here to eat and drink, but to surrender.

Every course (and the set menu was preceded by a cavalcade of amuse bouche) was served in stereo by two waiters, one of whom would then explain at some length the provenance and philosophy behind the jewel-like portions. Our first course proper called itself a deconstructed Caesar Salad. There was lettuce in it, although it was hard to tell as the lettuce had been chargrilled. It tasted good, perhaps not quite as good as the Caesar Salad served in Maison François in Duke Street, St James’s, but it was hard to tell as this dish was at best two mouthfuls. There might have been a sprinkling of caviar, judging by the time dark cockatoo had spent looming over our plates with a pair of tweezers, but without my magnifying glass it was hard to tell.

The next course, our waiter told us reverentially, was the chefs’ signature dish, created in 2013, which had put the crested ones on the culinary map. This piece of culinary history turned out to be spaghetti with tomato and basil sauce. The blond cockatoo made this to order, cooking the spaghetti as you would a risotto, with a special ‘tomato water’ distilled, so our waiter explained, from datterini tomatoes. The sauce was ladled in at the end. Reader, I smiled when I ate it. It was delicious — there was tomato, basil and an indecent amount of butter. Could I have made something similar at home? Almost certainly, but in this evening of tweezers and forcing bags, a plate of spaghetti with tomato sauce was a relief. I finished every strand, and was grateful for the specially toasted piece of bread that came with the dish to mop up every last morsel of sauce.

But my enthusiasm was ill-timed, because it meant that I was unable to finish the next dish — char carbonara — which was a piece of fish flown in from Alaska (oddly, I felt, since we were on the edge of the Adriatic) and cooked like a piece of meat, and finished under a grill (hence the carbonara handle — carbonari were charcoal burners). This dish, the menu explained, had been created by the tufted twosome in 2018. It was toothsome, but I found myself unable to finish it. My half-eaten fish was noticed first by the waiter and then by the blond, burlier chef, who came over and gave me a hard stare before asking me if everything was alright with my food. I avoided his gaze and muttered something about being full. The reproach was palpable. I felt that my two centimetres’ worth of half-eaten char would be served up for breakfast, lunch, dinner and tea until I had learnt my lesson. My husband resolved the situation by snaffling the offending item while the chef wasn’t looking.

I was impressed by a table of Koreans who, despite having limbs like pipe cleaners, cleaned every plate and were rewarded by the chef with a great deal of pigeon-breasted bonhomie. If there were gold stars handed out that night, it was clear that they were going to be the recipients.

The dessert course was preceded by a palate-cleansing grapefruit sorbet, which was perfect in every way. The dessert itself was a smear of something topped by a crunchy something else with a smattering of something unlikely, like bottarga. Again, my husband came to the rescue.

At the end of the meal I ordered a tisane of verveine. The smiley waiter came back carrying a teapot and was stopped by the blond chef — words were exchanged, and the smiley waiter was banished into the unseen part of the kitchen and didn’t emerge again. I don’t know what rule he had broken (pouring nearly boiling water onto a few leaves doesn’t seem that hard, but what do I know?), but whatever it was, it was clearly a cardinal sin. He wasn’t allowed out to say goodbye; instead we were eyeballed by the blond cockatoo, who did not smile as he ushered us out. The Koreans, who I noticed paid in cash, were practically levitated across the threshold on a plume of mutual self-congratulation.

I left feeling full, sober, and patronised. The meal had been memorable not for the food, but for the feeling of panic mixed with hilarity which I usually only experience in student productions in which one of my children is playing a small part. I managed, just about, to keep a straight face throughout the three-hour production, but to spend something like 600 euros for the privilege isn’t that funny. On the other hand, it is a meal I won’t forget in a hurry, rather like I won’t forget sitting opposite Marina Abramović in the Museum of Modern Art, or getting to the end of The Lobster by Yorgos Lanthimos. There is something extraordinary about such a level of conviction. It makes me feel that the only thing stopping me from becoming a luminary is a tectonic level of self-belief.

Our meal was probably the most sacerdotal experience I have had recently: the lighting, the rituals, the costumes, the hierarchy and maleness of the celebrants, the presumption of guilt on the part of the diners, the feeling of relief as we left. There was also the removal of choice: we, the customers, were not there to exercise free will. We were paying for the privilege of being told what to eat.

My experience is limited, thank goodness, but I can’t help feeling that these kinds of restaurants are, like many organised religions, a way of keeping us in our place. The chefs (usually male) know what’s best. I feel pretty confident that I have made countless plates of spaghetti with tomato and basil sauce for friends, family and various small children for the last forty years which were just as delicious as the dish produced by the blond cockatoo, but I have never felt that I have ‘created’ a dish. I am part of the continuum of women (and men) who cook daily to feed the people they love. Cooking, for me, is probably the moment when I feel closest to my very complicated mother. She died twelve years ago, but when I taste something I know exactly what she would have thought. I hope that when my daughters cook they are feeling the same. They may add a touch more salt, or a dollop of chilli crisp, but they are building on a foundation that stretches back through the generations: cook, eat, repeat.

I don’t regret my culinary experience in Trieste; it was preferable to experiencing a Gorillaz concert in my hotel bedroom. But I hope it is the last time that I pay a man to make me feel guilty for not finishing a piece of fish that had been flown 12,000 miles to appease his ego.