IN SEARCH OF EPICUREAN DELIGHTS …FROM WHERE WE LEFT OFF…

The week before last, we resumed our long awaited Saturday night outings. But before that, I once again had to do the dreaded deed… descend the stairs into the basement and rummage through those bags stashed with my summer clothes. I had taken a peek into them a week ago and saw nothing interesting, an untidy bundle of drab. Even if I dug deep into them, I would not make any pleasant discoveries. What I really would have liked to do, is what sister number three in England did a very long time ago when she was young, carefree and guilt free. Her ironing had started piling up in the basket and she had nothing to wear, so she ventured into short term solutions, nipping into Lewis’s and buying more clothes to tide her over and keep her happily in step with high street fashion. She then kept on shopping and ironing only those…the new additions on top of the pile. Finally, she had no idea what was in the rest of the ironing basket… she didn’t miss them… she didn’t really need them and so… gave the whole lot away to Oxfam, without battering an eyelid. That’s exactly how I felt about those bags of summer clothing. If only I could just close my eyes and give them all away and start afresh.

So after some hasty deliberation, I decided to leave them in the basement and go downtown and do a little window shopping. It was one of those brilliant spring days and I wanted to spring clean my whole appearance…in other words…get a new wardrobe. The streets in Chania were lined with jacaranda trees in full bloom with dazzling blue flowers, the pavements  strewn with their fallen petals and some gently floating down on the heads of pedestrians, with the slightest whisper of a breeze. It put me in just the right mood for shopping, to get a flush of colour back into my life after that terrible grey lockdown. In an hour’s time, I was swinging a bag with the first pick of some new arrivals, which looked a lot like my old favourites, but now buzzing in vibrant colours …Persian blue, strawberry jam red and tropical green.

Come Saturday morning, I soaped down my little blue Ford Ka, which would zip us into town and shimmy itself into small niches in the streets or car parks. Later that night, just as we were ambling out of the car park, our friends called, sounding a little ruffled, to say that they had been circling the town for ten minutes and couldn’t find a place to park. Our small coastal town was full of honking cars and pedestrians in gay attire, heading for bars and other night spots to savour the sweetness of new found freedom. Yiannis offered some suggestions as to where they could park, but others had beaten them to it. Anyway, the two of us got to the Italian restaurant at the old port, got placed at a comfortable table and waited for our friends. It was the longest wait of our life…they kept going in dizzy circles and calling us up frantically and we, calling them back with futile suggestions. All this went on for about an hour

 In the meantime, a cool wind started whisking up and I reluctantly threw a jacket over my shoulders, hiding part of that new silky blue top that was making its debut. Then the wind whipped up a notch or two, stiff and unfriendly, sending shivers down my arms. I shoved them into my jacket and zipped it up and just then, we saw our friends walking somewhat weakly, eyes glazed and bodies drained. In desperation, they had parked at a taxi stand, not caring if they were towed away or given a ticket. The waiter appeared for our orders and my friend’s spouse, wanting to take the edge off his exhaustion and irritation, looked up at the waiter and committed the cardinal sin of asking if they had anything new on the menu…the reply was a shade indignant and a slightly guilty…`no’… in a very firm but small voice. The four of us sat there and ordered the same dishes with the very same familiar tastes and the bright boys were full of silent recriminations… these people had more than a year to spruce up their act, slip in a few delectable entrées with just a whiff of truffle oil, enticing us into the main dishes, even if familiar, they could have been given a new twist…a casual splash of colour, a sprinkling of crispy mushroom crumble and a sprig or two of basil or marjoram. But nothing of that sort… and my friend and I trembled at the thought of what awaited the fate of yet another restaurant…in the eyes of the Saturday night fine dining connoisseurs.

Our Saturday night quest into epicurean delights, has been a very long journey indeed, full of twists and turns. It started more than ten years ago when we had more GET UP AND GO in us. We were more adventurous in those days, our insatiable taste buds pushing us out further from town in search of new gastronomic experiences. We dined at a Chinese restaurant with a façade of fierce red dragons that opened only in summer for tourists. By nine, when the night was young and just starting out for us, the restaurant would empty out quickly, as the Northern European visitors had to tuck in early before the summer sunset… and we were left alone with the two waiters and the cook. Then there was this new Steak House that promised ambience and juicy steaks and instead we got a brightly lit place with a few youngsters watching football on a large TV screen, shouting and cheering their team on. Further out of town there was this Sicilian guy who ran an Italian restaurant. His food was delicious but every time we ordered the risotto, the waitress would disappear into the kitchen, then reappear sheepishly and say …`No risotto today.’ After a couple of such `todays’ we left, leaving in our wake, another failed establishment. There was also this place at the old port, which went down…doomed with the rest… where they thought it a good idea to seat us on wooden barrels…hoping it would be an authentic experience…and it was. We spent the night shifting the weight of our sore bottoms from one cheek to the other. We finally came out and emerged into the night, walking awkwardly… stiff and bent.

Then we hit gold, when we discovered this Turkish tavern outside the town. It was a lovely place with tables under olive trees and lights peeping through the silvery leaves, like the hidden eyes of women in a Turkish harem…the stuff of The Arabian Nights. The dishes were scrumptious, teasing out the spicy tastes and scents of old Constantinople. But alas, the wine fell short… barrel wine, rough and alcoholic. So the next time we went there, we sneaked in a bottle of wine and asked the waiter if he would just turn the other way. He was nice and obliging and we had such a good time and we were so emboldened that we went again…with two bottles of wine. This time our friendly waiter wasn’t there. Just as we were trying to sweet talk this other waiter into letting us drink our own vino… the owner came running out, bristling with extreme agitation, stating that it should have never been allowed in the first place. Everyone stopped eating and looked up at us… and we got up and the bright boys shrugged their shoulders and arched their eyebrows to suggest that … we could easily take our custom elsewhere… and we clutched our bottles and left.

After many such exploits, we began to get weary, the verve of the earlier years waned and we settled for one or two places where the food was good, there was a choice of wines and the owners knew us and best of all… we could banter with them and the waiters. One such place was a fish restaurant near the old tanneries. We sat outside near the water’s edge and watched the lights of small fishing boats flickering in the distance and the white surf crashing against the rocks under a starlit sky. We were regulars there, the same table reserved for us… the privileged ones… and the waiters catered for our little whims and fancies and laughed at our jokes. Then one Saturday, on a sultry autumn night, when the place was crowded with diners and the waiters were rushing back and forth, with beads of sweat trickling down their brows…we had happened to finish our meal and were waiting for the bill. After a few minutes, the bright boys started waving in the direction of the flustered waiters and then drawing squares in the air…of imaginary bills… to draw their attention to us and suggest that… we were at the end of our tether. Our familiar waiter finally came up and said in a voice bereft of any friendly tone, that if we wished to pay by card, we had to pay at the till…WHAT???…When did they change their policy towards us…the esteemed customers…the loyal patrons???…Or was it because they preferred hard cash, with the financial crisis and all…and not plastic money? Finally it didn’t go down very well and we removed our patronage from them. Luckily for us, a new restaurant opened right next to them, an old stone building perched on some rocks, all renovated and new with a wide all embracing veranda, hanging over the water, with little swells lapping under us and soft jazz wafting from hidden speakers, and the food…a gourmet’s delight…and we got to sit high above the others who didn’t value our custom… look down on them and gloat.

And this brings me down to last Saturday night, when the four of us bundled into the two-door Ford Ka, just like old times and sprinted off downtown. This time we were visiting our old haunt, the Japanese restaurant tucked away in a narrow alley with tall old Venetian buildings on either side, near the old port. The whole length of the paved lane was lit up with bulbs the size of melons and the tables on either side had little tea lights. We were given a table next to a party of people we knew. Every time we dined there we saw them… sitting there like permanent fixtures and I’m sure they thought the same of us. The food was marvellous, with lots of new dishes included. We nibbled the night away, picking up small squares of sushi with prawn, tuna or salmon with our chopsticks, dipping them in soy sauce and smearing them with wasabi, which went right up our nostrils and exploded somewhere in the sinuses. The waiter poured a bottle of fine viognier, chilled, fruity and smooth into our glasses and asked if we the `girls’ were enjoying the food. YES we were and YES…we did feel like girls on such a night as this, sitting outside under an indigo blue velvety sky dotted with stars, catching up after almost a year.

We strolled back to the car park with such gay abandon and forgot to put on our masks. They were in our jacket pockets, except for Yiannis, who had his dangling from one ear and flapping in the cool breeze. We were a bunch of scofflaws, flouting the law, chatting and shouting into the night, raising our voices a decibel or two because that’s what we had become accustomed to, after more than a year of speaking through masks. But we didn’t get caught and what a fine time we had!

Till next week then.