Birthday nosh

Carl really raised the bar by treating me to a wonderful birthday meal last month in the One Pico restaurant in town. Not to be outdone, I booked a table for dinner this evening in The Mill restaurant at The Village at Lyons. Chef Richard Corrigan set up the place, but has since moved on. The setting is magnificent (one the banks of the Grand Canal, with a mill race passing dramatically right beside the restaurant windows), and the old Georgian stonework buildings have been superbly restored. Sadly, though, the evening was a bit of a disaster in terms of food (which, after all, is what it should have been all about).

Carl says he enjoyed and appreciated it, but I got a really raw deal. I ordered a lamb dish as my main course, but it turned out to be so tough that I could neither cut nor chew it and had to send it back. I ordered turbet instead, which was under-cooked and, far from falling off the bone, flatly refused to cooperate. That also got sent back, and i abandoned the idea of a main course. The floor manager or whatever he's called assured me there would be no charge for my main course (but, of course, I though to myself: how could there be any question of charging me for something I didn't have?), and offered me a selection from the cheese board on the house (normally a 10-euro supplement). My souffle dessert was good, and the wine was pleasant.

When it came time to call for the bill, I had reached the stage of expecting better compensation than merely not being charged for my main course (the fact that table d'hote was the only option meant, anyway, that there was no separate charge listed for mains). As it happened, management decided not to charge me at all for what I'd eaten. I was happy with the gesture, but hugely disappointed overall.

It had been a bit of drive there and back, so it was well after midnight by the time we got back to Carl's place. Naturally, the first thing I did was have him load Blipfoto so I could see what the Blip boffins had provided for us. Forums! Hip hooray!