Part of the fun of a tasting menu is encountering certain tastes and textures for the first time, writes Colin Farquhar.
If you’ve ever worked in customer service, you’ll understand how demoralising a cutting remark from a member of the public can be.
You may have put in a whole day of hard work, had countless positive interactions and a mostly productive, mostly enjoyable shift. One cutting comment. One wee piece of frosty feedback might unravel all those good feelings.
Last weekend, I went to Cameron House at Loch Lomond. It was a fantastic treat. My partner’s birthday, our first together, and a smasher of a short break at one of Scotland’s most beautiful and romantic spots.
The staff service was exemplary for the entire weekend, from the bar to the spa and restaurants. The food was astonishing, especially on the Saturday night, when we indulged in Tamburrini and Wishart’s tasting menu. It was quite spectacular, and I was effusive and grateful to the waiting staff, practically weeping over what was possibly the finest food I had ever eaten.
For one person in that restaurant, though, it wasn’t quite fine enough. I witnessed perhaps the most brazen display of consumer insouciance I have seen in real life. A drive-by and a retaliation; a sharp retort, in deep parallel to the luscious food on offer.
“We will pay for our drinks, but the food was awful, and we expect to have the whole cost removed from the bill,” shrieked the diner behind me, out of my eyeline in such a way that no amount of sideways squinting could give me a clear view. This after they had been offered a discount.
Trust me, the food was not awful. It was beautiful.
Meals akin to art
Much like Six by Nico, Tamburrini and Wishart serves simple, delicate dishes, with minimalistic presentation. Tender cooking, sharp flavours that interplay wonderfully, and, objectively, not awful.
Even the bread brought to us before the first main course was accompanied by the most delectable pumpkin butter, becoming probably the best thing I’d ever had in my mouth, at least until the scallops arrived.
The other diner remained resolute. They would not pay. I was gobsmacked.
When the manager returned with our bill, she was deflated. Only five minutes before, she had enthusiastically riffed with me on the origins of the desserts, crumbs of a curd and parsley-root mille-feuille that had nearly made me cry still sitting before me.
These meals are so well designed, I now realise that they are akin to art. The textures are like that of a painting. In Six by Nico earlier in the year, I witnessed someone ask to remove beetroot from a mostly beetroot dish. Would you ask Rembrandt not to paint with red?
Some people just don’t get it
Before beginning a meal, the staff ask if you have any allergies or intolerances, and likes or dislikes. Between each course, they check in for feedback.
Some people just want to watch the latest Michael Bay. Some people just want chips
You get to know your food, and you get to know the servers. It’s a wonderful, organic experience, somewhat unexpected in a structure that feels so precisely constructed.
Like art, it might just be that some people simply don’t get it, but that appears harder to fathom with food, particularly when there are six to eight plates of such glory served.
But, some people just want to watch the latest Michael Bay. Some people just want chips.
My view is that, to an extent, you have to give yourself over to the experience of a tasting menu. The chef may not be in front of you, but they are somewhere, and the thought that has gone into what you’re consuming is likely beyond what diners can conceive. We should try not to be so reckless.
You wouldn’t tell Picasso how to paint
I can still taste the “Duck Tea” I drank before the scallops, the last appetiser to appear; delicious mushroom oil in the bowl, threading itself through the consommé.
I scrabbled around in a champagne foam to pick out the last pieces of cured halibut and celeriac puree, my desperation an indication of how relentless I was in throttling every last piece of flavour from the dish.
I sipped my espresso and gave a quick thought to those other folk in the restaurant who didn’t hold the same gratitude as I
Even with coffee at the end, we were presented with petit fours. One was a lardon fudge. It was sharp and salty. “A nice Scottish fudge,” said another customer behind me. You’re absolutely right.
I sipped my espresso and gave a quick thought to those other folk in the restaurant who didn’t hold the same gratitude as I. I decided I was in the right.
After all, you wouldn’t tell Picasso how to paint. Sometimes you just have to let the experts take you on a journey.
Colin Farquhar is former head of cinema operations for Belmont Filmhouse in Aberdeen