Saturdays With Reservations - The First, Of Many More, Hopefully

Conversations

11am on a Madrid train, off to see the Prado, the Reina Sofia, or, most likely, to go shopping. YY recalls that we had once tried to set up monthly dinners to try out new restaurants, with the total success rate of 0 dinners accomplished. "We should start this again! Let's do it every 3rd Saturday of the month for complete randonmess! And let's call it Saturdays with Reservations! Get it? 'Cos we always come "with reservations"? And we can do food reviews!" M thinks that we should document our conversations, 'cos according to M watching us is like watching a sitcom, more specifically, the type of sitcom where people blabber on endlessly with great intensity and at great length on the most trivial of issues. I had hoped that if we were to be a sitcom, we would be more "glamorous 20-somethings in big city talking about love, life and friendship" (aka Friends), rather than "dysfunctional 30-somethings in big city blabbering about nothing" (aka Seinfeld). But since both were major hits of their times, I guess you take what you can get.

Fast forward one month later. The first Saturdays with Reservations, has, defying all odds and against all known precedents for how our group of friends operates, actually taken off. JL asks, "Why are we meeting on the 3rd Saturday? How are we supposed to remember this when it's so random?" YY, "The whole point is to be completely and totally random! First or last Saturdays would be too contrived, and 2nd just feels like an afterthought. Similarly, let's try to do a leisurely 3 hour lunch one of these days, but it has to be Tuesday or Wednesday so as to be completely random! That will throw everyone, including the bosses off!" JL asks, "Why not combine the birthday celebrations with this?" YY, "Folks can opt not to come for this, but may feel that they have to go for the birthday ones. And the birthday girl might have a specific place in mind that does not fit in with this theme." And so on. Seinfeld writ large indeed, I hear you M.

Real afterthought: This means that this blog will only be updated once a month. I'm a bit of a tech have-not, and not very au fait with this reality, but somewhere in the back of my mind am faintly aware that this blog idea may not, therefore, work.

Food (JL, WK, YY, ML, EL, EN, EL's bf, XL)

Pietrasanta (Italian)
5b Portsdown Road

01-03 Wessex Village

Ghastly, absolutely ghastly. I cannot believe that this is the site of the first SWR! (I accidentally typed "SOW" in my first attempt to abbreviate this. WK had also confused everyone by calling it SWD for a while, leading EL to think that we were doing Saturdays with Deservations? Freudian slips all round.) We had wanted to go to Sage, but they are unfortunately in the middle of a move from Robertson Quay to Mohammed Sultan, which would not be completed by the time the first SWR takes place!

The place is pretty enough, airy and rustic with al fresco dining, in the middle of a fairly charming, out of the way type of place. It's pretty casual, and unexpectedly packed for such a new and hard to access place. It's good for us too since we drive, as there is plenty of parking all round. JL thinks she might come back here to read, although she will not be able to eat anything (see below).

The service is probably the worst offender. They are not rude or unfriendly, but just horrifically incompetent. We were very confused by the waitress who kept trying to give us 3 starters and 4 mains as a "first course", and the other 4 mains as a "second course" (there were 8 of us by the way). She also kept repeating the entire order, after each and every time someone ordered (maybe she thought we might change our minds after seeing what everyone else wanted, and this was a way of giving us a second, third, fourth, fifth chance to do so?) . So YY took the notepad from the waitress and decided to fill it in herself, helpfully indicating which was a starter and which was a main. (This is only mildly strange in our world. YY last did this in a tapas bar in Madrid, when the waiter appeared to be losing his grasp on reality coping with 5 extremely boisterous and impatient people who could not speak Spanish or accept Spanish customs of dining in a tapas bar.) JL wanted to see a wine list and was told cursorily by a waitress to look behind at the wall displaying all the wine bottles before the waitress scurried off with no further explanations. We were later told by a more senior waitstaff that this lack of a wine list, or indeed, helpfulness, had something to do with the chef's brother being in Italy. We lost interest. And XL had balsamic vinegar spilled all over her jeans and cardigan.

The food itself was average to mediocre, in no way compensating for the travesty that was the service. Blandness seemed to be the order of the day, inflicting the panfried snails, the home made ravioli with spinach and ricotta cheese, and the custard cream. YY's codfish was not fresh. Everything else was alright, and forgettable, including the risotto with mushrooms, tuscan style ravioli with meat and sausage, lasagne and panna cotta. I vaguely recall that the mussels and chocolate cake were halfway decent though.

Somewhat a waste that the first SWR was not a mindblowing culinary experience with laser beams shooting out (this is for you, M!). Maybe we could rewrite history and pretend that the one-Michelin star Hoffman or the extremely, extremely good Ovic, both in Barcelona, was the first SWR? Oh well, at least we got it started, which is truly amazing guys.

Second afterthought: After this scathing review, I can't imagine anyone in their right minds wanting to try this place. I feel somewhat anxious that this may somehow damage someone's business enterprise? But then again, in all likelihood, it will just be the 12 of us reading this, so no harm done right?