Buko Nero/Spizza for Friends, 03.04.02

1. Duck liver crostini with coriander: good
2. Pineapple-grapefruit “welcome drink” (?): alright
3. Warm tofu and tomato salad, alfafa, coriander, tau yew: good but irrelevant
4. Seafood bisque thickened with egg white: bland, also incongruous
5. Pineapple jelly and lemon granita ...which it wasn’t
6. Risotto with gorgonzola and Thai basil: excellent
7. Fresh fruit sushi: honey mango, rock melon, strawberry; orange syrup: scandalously awful, “too challenging”, “Merilynesque”

I N T E R M I S S I O N

8. Hot apple tart (pie) with vanilla gelato: alright
9. Sweet pizza: melted chocolate, almond flakes, oranges: improved by the addition of olive oil. Not appreciated by anyone else, however.
10. Remaindered pizza dough, herb-infused olive oil: dinner, like life, and other sundry biological processes, is, or at least should be, cyclical. Begin the repast with the communal breaking of bread, the simple fruit of the earth, then sample the giddy lavishness of fancy creations, and to conclude the evening: can one, without severe self-recrimination, really force down yet another circulation-clogging Valrhona chocolate confection? Bread as valediction and sober reproof: scorn the sumptuousness of more richly laden tables; relish with thanksgiving everything austere, earthy, humble, life-enhancing, rather than the vain flourishes of florid imaginations. Food is sustenance merely, hedonism is heresy.