Last night Josh and I went to a very fancy restaurant and ate very fancy food which resulted not in a heavenly eating indulgance but a quick-where-is-the-nearest-gas-station-restroom sort of experience. As an adult who is usually deprived of gourmet dining I really wanted to use this dinner (which we were treated to by our accompanying party) with a “I’ll try anything once” sort of approach. All said and done, Josh and I sampled the following animals: crab, duck egg, pork belly, short ribs, stergon, halibut, scallops, and the highly anticipated, extremely controversial: foie gras. Banned in California for its inhumane practice of overfeeding and engorging the liver of ducks and geese, foie gras will most likely become extinct from the American menu. Our dinner guests LOVE this fatty liver dish and manage to ignore any guilty feelings they may have over the demise of the animal it came from. Josh and I approached this appetizer with a “When In Rome…” sort of attitude.

The liver appeared atop a little waffle drenched with huckleberry sauce and I inadvertedly sawed off a sizable portion and transferred it to my delicate china plate. It wasn’t too bad, but the texture was mushier then I expected, and the huckleberries were an intense flavoring. Needless to say, I found the crab cakes and even the duck egg sitting on top of a salad to be better appetizers. Somehow I ended up encouraged to finish up the last piece of foie gras from the plate…so I had to dive in for a second round. I think my stomach tried to fight it off a little bit by rumbling, “No more food now, we have to ingest this duck liver.” Instead, I went ahead and started eating my entree of sea scallops and delicately sliced fig halves. Josh’s short ribs were drizzled with truffle oil. The plates were swooping arcs, the food was decorated with artistic smears of sauce and well placed arugala. A fancy restaurant is truly all about the presentation.

Against my better judgement, I ordered a dessert: chocolate cake with chocolate beet ice cream. Imagine my dismay when the cake arrived drenched in the same hideous huckleberry sauce the foie gras was bathed in! My taste buds were very confused with the first bite: wait, didn’t we just have this with duck liver? What’s this chocolate stuff? I pressed on, pushing the huckleberries aside and trying to enjoy the cake and the curious beet ice cream. Halfway into it my stomach gave up…I pushed the plate aside and within a few moments started to feel like I might throw up. I scolded myself inwardly: what is you problem? Someone takes you out to a fancy restaurant and you’re going to WASTE your whole meal? Since I have an iron stomach, my body decided that it would rather start passing out then upchuck, so I started swerving a little in my chair. I realized I was sweating and losing my breath, (is it hot in here or is it just me?), so I politely excused myself to the restroom. Several moments later, after I returned, Josh excused himself too. Turns out we had the exact same experience: A rejection of the duck liver combined with a wretched response to a second round of huckleberries. Neither of us lost our cookies…instead we had to ride out a series of stomach cramps.

We had to go to a Halloween party right after our three hour dinner ordeal, but we almost didn’t make it. It didn’t help that we kept talking about the dinner: “Did you see the SIZE of the foie gras I piled onto my plate? What was I thinking?”We actually drove up to the party only to turn around and seek a more private, anonymous, bathroom, say, in a gas station. Of course the party was in Bellevue where gas stations usually close at a decent hour. We attempted to sneak into a hotel lobby bathroom but decided that was too obvious. At that point my stomach could go either way so I willed it into submission.

Stay tune for Halloween party pictures…