Saturday, April 17, 2004
A restaurant review, a theatre review, and an ER review, brought to you by The Codeine
[I started this post the morning of April 17th, while on the codeine, and then got tired, which is why it is only getting posted now, May 2nd]
Belgo Centraal serves damn fine food. The very slow industrial lift to the restaurant in the basement is a bit gimmicky, but their Beat the Clock special deal, with which you get a meal and a drink and pay the price of the time you ordered, is genius. The four complimentary schnapps that came with the menus were contrasty and lovely.
My vegetarian-but-very-not-vegan bouchée de champignons sauvages was SO delicious. The mushrooms were mushroomy, the pearl onions were tiny bites of deliciousness, the creamy Orval beer sauce divine. My brother and mother commented favourably on the moules, and my dad on the saucisses de porc. The frites that came with the mussels and the stoemp (mashed potatoes, turnips and other veg) with the sausages were excellent, as were the sides of garlicky green beans and sweet carrots we'd ordered to share. The red cabbage with apples and raspberry beer was fichu bon.
For dessert my brother had crème brulée and I had a petit pot de chocolat, flavoured with coffee and topped with crème fraiche. Divine, and nicely accompanied with floris chocolate beer. I may have been converted on the not-a-fan-of beer front, but it's not clear if that goes only for chocolatey, desserty beers, or perhaps only by Belgian beer. I will need to return to Belgo Centraal to test this scientifically. Anyway, I disagree with those at that link who thought it awful.
Across the street, The Dark at the Donmar Theatre was by turns funny, unease-causing, sad, and touching. The actors were all good, though the teenager was a bit over the top, and the old lady had the best lines:
Her: "They microwaved one baby."
Her son: "That was a cat."
Her: "Same difference."
and
"I'm alert to the crying. It comes with being a telephonist for the national emergency service."
Note the elegant transition into my next review. On the way home after the play, I stumbled on my way up the stairs in Queensway station and hit my knee on the edge of the stairs. I told my dad I was fine when he asked if I was okay (a stiff upper lip is de rigeur now that I have my British passport), and I figured it couldn't have been that bad since my trousers were intact. But then I noticed the growing dark spot along my shin, and rolled up the trousers to see I was bleeding from a narrow but deep cut on the crown of my knee. Back at the flat, FutureAmbassador phoned to find out which nearby emergency department had the shortest waiting time (after looking at my knee and saying, yes, I can see your patella, definitely 2 stitches needed -- she was pre-med before transfering to international relations in undergrad) while Future ISConsultant and her boyfriend got me frozen peas and my dad found my NHS card and my mum got some other stuff together. I pretended to be calm and focussed.
We got to Saint Mary's hospital just before a bunch of other people, so I was triaged rather quickly. The nurse encouraged me to take the paracetamol with codeine she offered, and I'm glad I did even though the shock was initially dulling the pain. My parents and I waited around for about an hour and a half, I read some stuff about Amitai Etzioni and Mixed Scanning, and then a very nice doctor put two stitches in my knee and that was that.
Saturday was a bit of a write-off as far as work was concerned. Later I wondered if the Accident & Emergency waiting times modelling at an NHS hospital in London done by a former LSE MSc student and Dr Lane had had any impact on my experience.
