First brush with continental food

Its been about three years since my first(and only brush ) with continental food. But that experience was memorable enough to warrant a post. It all started innocuously enough, with an intent to catch up with a few friends over dinner. Someone enthusiatically suggested an uppity place that served continental food. 'Continental ' sounded sophisticated and exotic (Interesting word too; has four of the vowels in reverse order. Happily, 'subcontinental' remedies that ) I've always eaten stuff that grew on continents ; no marine or flying objects, and with 'continental' , I'd hoped that I'd encouter things that were atleast vaguely familiar. I was over-optimistic.

I forget the restaurant's name. I don't recall having to wait- a piece of information that combined with the fact that it was saturday, should ideally have aroused my suspicions. A waiter led us to a table, and handed out menu cards. Much of it was filled with exotic- sounding extremely hard-to-pronouce dish names. To appear sophisticated, I realised, you had to give a nod of approval, and say ' That stuff's cool !' whenever someone apprehensively pronouced a dish endowed with a name that would make Humuhumunukunukuapuaa(earlier, state fish of Hawaii) seem like a pet-name.

My primary and fundamental concern was to determine which of the dishes were veg. Once I'd solved that part of the problem, we had to handle the ordering bit. There was solid technique involved. You summoned the waiter, opened your menu-card , and pointed out the dish you wanted to order. The waiter would then pronouce it for you, with an air of pretense, and a supercilious smile, both of which seemed to suggest that he was disseminating knowledge, hitherto unknown to the rest of the world. He then bowed, as if to acknowledge our admiration, and left. (us to the mercy of the cook ?)

We took turns in all this pointing, and then got back to our discussion on the latest bollywood block-buster, whose absolute lack of content formed the content of the rest of the evening's conversation. I've formulated a new law. It states -" Irrespective of the worthiness of the topic under discussion, the same amount of discussion occurs." I call it 'The law of conservation of conversation'.

Food arrived. We got to the starters. Then more starters arrived. And then some more. It was only then that I figured out that the concept of main-dish and side-dish didn't apply to continental food. Everything was main dish, and everything was side dish. I guess that sounds eerily zen-like, but is the eternal truth :)

I haven't tried continental food since then, but am looking forward to another adventure.Just need to find some unsuspecting souls for company.