Eating out is not my natural environment. Ordering, lavish décor, waiting to be served, polite conversation, slow eating of ordered food, ambient atmosphere, the tip- it’s really not for me. I’m far happier in a rowdy public house. Nonetheless, it was a special occasion so Mrs W and me had a night out at a popular eating place in town.
After the pre-ordering ritual we waited for our starter for ten. It duly arrived and no complaints so far. Halfway through the first course is when I had an inkling this was going to be one of those nights. “Is everything OK?” asked the waiter. Oh yes, delicious, tasty etc. etc.
Now it’s my understanding that the inquiry is de rigueur as a kind of questionnaire on the quality of the chef’s work. I’ve no problem with that though there should be a policy that only one “food up to standard” interruption should be allowed per course. I was going to write a white paper setting out the details of this subject on my serviette but I didn’t get a minute’s peace.
The barrage began. A constant flow of waiters and waitresses (all the staff seemed to take turns to interject) broke into our table asking if all was well. And they all butted in at the most importune times. My wife and I were having big talk when a waiter stuck his face between us. Conversation was impossible as we could never tell when the next disruption was going to happen. I’m a laid back sort of person though I almost lost the rag when, as I was getting to the punch line of my favourite Coogan’s Bluff joke, a waiter tapped me on the shoulder and asked “Is everything OK?”
Eventually, we got to the dessert and I’d had enough. I waited for the next waiter to appear. It wasn’t long. This time when I was asked the question I answered.
“Actually no. There is a problem. I asked for this apple pie to be hot. It is cold.”
“Sir asked for it to be cold.”
He was right I did ask for it that way but I was on a roll.
“The service in here is terrible. You can’t even tell the difference between hot and cold.”
He pulled out his little jotter and consulted it.
“It says here, sir, that you wanted your apple pie cold.”
“ I want it hot”
This minor disturbance didn’t go unnoticed and heads were turning.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Looks more like steak & kidney pie and mash to me 😕
G’morgen Soutie. you should see it at the other end. (Howzat for grossness at this time of the morning?)
Looks a bit heavy on the cinnamon.
Competition’s hotting up in the grub stakes then, JW. Or should it be steaks?
Mrs. O. Impossible to get apple tart/pie in a restaurant, here without loads of cinnamon, why is that? Some of the best apples for taste yet always obscured with spice.
TR: Reminds me of something I once read in a bad quote competition. “His apple pie and ice cream were engaged in a race to be first to arrive at room temperature”
Over the years Mrs J and I have discovered that the best meals by far are those that we cook at home.
That pie looks a bit odd, the filling looks like meat and the ice cream looks like mashed potato
At Chez Jazz you would get home made ice cream and there aren’t enough michelin stars (or whatever) to classify Mrs J’s steak pie although her fish pie gets the edge IMHO.
The cream is ice cream, vanilla bean with bits of bashed bean in it. Hence the speckles.
LW, agree, always overspiced. Can’t agree that most of the American apples have much taste when cooked, OK to eat raw but don’t hold their flavour much when cooked. What irritates me is that they will use the cheap cinnamon, pretty bloody grim! (Cinnamon comes in two grades, prices and quality of flavour!)
A note for spicing. Less cinnamon and substitute a little allspice and mace, makes the whole flavour far more subtle. No more than a 1/4 teaspoon of allspice, it has a pepper like quality.
I never bother to make apple tart alone here, always use apple and blackberry, pick my own and freeze, much better. The blackberries are positively orgasmic here on the NW coast.
At the moment we are in rhubarb and strawberry pie season, both homegrown, in a sweet frog patisserie case. I do not anticipate any requests for divorce, at least until the end of the rhubarb season!!
Royalist, I’m surprised you didn’t just tell the manager to stop invading the table. What a way to run a restaurant!
Sorry for misleading you, folks, it wasn’t intentional. The photo is from Google images though it is a fair representation of the pie I received. I’m not into photography but when I do upload an original I scribble a JW10 copyright on it. Just so as you know.