Are we Amusé?

I'm a lucky girl. My eatathon of a birthday last week started off with a fantastic breakfast with friends at Greenhouse, morning tea was a Greenhouse donut and Lindt Chilli Chocolate, lunch was another fantastic meal at West End Deli in West Perth, the afternoon offered me a massage and coconut bubble tea, and then I was whisked off to a mystery location for dinner. I was told to dress nicely and was assured I didn't need to bring my hard hat or steel caps, so I was looking forward to a civilised evening.

 West End Deli lunch: "smoked salmon, eggplant and date chutney, coriander, brioche, poached egg" ($21) and "squid, cucumber, tomato, butter beans, oregano vinaigrette" ($19) 

(Before I continue, I have to get something off my chest... the menu at West End Deli actually said "vinaigarette", and not "vinaigrette"... not quite as bad as a misplaced apostrophe, but still irritating, particularly as it makes me think of Shane Delia pronouncing it "vinegarette" on Ready Steady Cook and Peter Everett blithely parroting him. Why don't menu writers use spell checkers? Why do I watch Ready Steady Cook?)

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Degolicious Dining at Jackson's Restaurant

A few years ago I spent a weekend down south with three friends, which we spent eating Miami Bakehouse pies for almost every single meal, washing them down with copious amounts of wine, supplementing our diet with Cheezels, cheese and crackers, watching 80s movies and thinking the house we were staying in was going to blow into the ocean from the gale force winds battering the coast at the time. We had grand plans of walking down to the beach and getting some exercise in during our girly weekend, but the wind and the pies kept us safely inside.

(To go off on a bubbly tangent, this was also the weekend that I tried Golden Crumpet Toast for the first and last time. Don't be fooled by their website's claims of it being "a fun, convenient way to enjoy that Golden™ crumpet taste". If you think traditional crumpets are boring and inconvenient then you don't deserve to eat them).

On another weekend, I enjoyed my very first degustation experience with these same three girls, and with bellies full to bursting and spirits high (due largely to great company and only somewhat due to the paired wines) we declared that we would henceforth enjoy such an evening together on a semi-regular basis, when our schedules and bank balances could allow it. This fateful evening was so long ago that I can't even give you a ballpark estimate of when it was, and we didn't follow through on this declaration until last month.

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