Five Diamonds and a Kid
Courtesy of
Nat Decants
By
Natalie MacLean
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My Dinner with Rian
Ever since my son was born, I dreamed about taking him to a fine
restaurant for his first formal meal. I imagined that Rian, now
five, would wear a crisp white shirt, pleated black pants and a
small tartan bow-tie. He and the maître d' would shake hands as
equals. The haughty waiter François would melt when Rian made
careful selections using the French acquired from reading his
Caillou books.
When our meals arrived and Rian had his first taste of foie gras,
his face would be pleasure made flesh; he'd devour his caviar with a
lust usually reserved for Kraft dinner. My husband Andrew and I
would sip our wine and wonder how we had managed to raise such a
cultured, well-behaved child. We'd acknowledge the compliments from
other diners with happy shrugs, as if to say, "Guess we just got
lucky with this one."
It's nice to dream.
"Let's take Rian to Signatures," I suggest to Andrew one evening,
after several glasses of port. Signatures is the local French
restaurant that serves très haute cuisine in the city's Cordon Bleu
Culinary Institute, where chefs train to work in Michelin-starred
restaurants. Andrew winces, and counters by suggesting our favourite
burger joint.
"No, that's too child-friendly," I retort.
"You're designing trouble again aren't you?" Andrew accuses.
That's how my husband unjustly characterizes the creative conflict
that innocently bubbles up in our lives—situational dramas that just
happen to provide the basis for a good story.
"But what if we see people we know?" Andrew asks limply. "What if
we want to go back there again? Can't we do this in a city where we
don't live?"
I stay firm and finally he gives in with a final pout: "Well, I'm
going to drink a lot of wine."
His resistance may be futile, but it makes me pause. Should
parents even take young children to good restaurants? Shouldn't they
be kid-free zones, like executive class in airplanes and
couples-only resorts? Shouldn't they be havens for parents who've
hired a babysitter to escape somewhere for grown-up conversations
that won't be interrupted? Are we just trying to make children into
mini-adults?
And can kids even appreciate fine tastes? Most young animals are
repelled by strange flavours, especially strong ones; it's a
built-in survival instinct. A child's taste buds are sensitive
because they haven't been broadened (and blunted) by years of hot,
spicy foods. For adults, the rush of a bold curry is a pleasant
perversion of our palate: it actually triggers our pain receptors.
Not so for most children.
If it's an effort for parents to keep their offspring civilized
when dining out, it's often twice as much work for the restaurant.
Not only are children messy, prone to spills and crumbs, but
requests for sixteen substitutions and bland food can frazzle even
the most patient chef.
The flip side is if we wait too long to introduce children to the
pleasures of a good restaurant, and they may grow up on a diet that
never moves beyond fast and frozen—unless we have the time and
talent to cook great meals at home. For parents, good restaurants
are a relief from house arrest; for kids, they can be another way to
learn about the world. Children have many teachers outside of
school: the dentist who explains the chemistry of sugar, the butcher
who shows them weights and measures, the librarian who reads them
stories and the waiter who brings the abundance of the earth to
their plate.
After wrestling with these issues, I finally settle on the fact
that dining out has become our family sport. I've recently abandoned
the longing for us to be one of those outdoorsy families on the
cover of the L.L. Bean catalogue, canoeing on a lake or hiking in
the mountains. The down-filled vests I bought, which flutter like
beautiful fall leaves in our closet, still have the price tags still
attached.
So I make a reservation at Signatures for Saturday evening. I
want Rian's first experience of fine cuisine to be a sensory
awakening for him, one that will be both shield and sword for the
onslaught of pizza joints in adolescence.
- o -
At 4 p.m. on Saturday, my anxiety surfaces. I'm beginning to
think this is a big mistake. But just as Odysseus strapped himself
to the mast before he heard the sirens sing, I too had a plan. When
I called the restaurant, I asked for a bottle Château Gruaud-Larose,
an expensive bordeaux, to be decanted several hours before we
arrived. So it's breathing peacefully right now, even though I am
not.
There's little hope for the white shirt, black pants and bow-tie.
Rian dislikes collars, Velcro, zippers, buttons or snaps—essentially
everything except t-shirts and sweatpants. But the restaurant's
dress code requires jackets for gentlemen. As we stand in front of
his emptied dresser, all seems lost until Rian spies his Peter Pan
outfit hanging out of his dress-up trunk. The forest green jacket
has a crest with crossed swords, giving it the appearance of a
private school blazer. Topped off with a green hat and orange
feather, Rian looks like the heir to a Bavarian beer-making dynasty.
"Com'on Tink, we're off to Neverland!" Rian crows, jumping around
the bedroom with plastic dagger drawn. I'm relieved that he's
entered into his favourite story—perhaps I can even convince Mr.
Darling upstairs to join in the fun.
When we get to the restaurant, Rian stares up in awe at the
building's grey-stone turrets. "A castle," he whispers under his
breath. Inside, he's enchanted with the soaring ceilings, the
tinkling piano, the rich colours, the folded fabrics, the polished
silver, the feeling of period graciousness. He responds serenely to
a decorum that is such a contrast to the sensory assault of a
fast-food joint.
The maître d' is Brian Donahue, a tall man in a dark suit. As he
greets us, he gives Rian a conspiratorial wink. But Rian eyes him
suspiciously: he knows only one other man who dresses mostly in
black. When Donahue offers to take Rian's outer coat, he recoils.
"This time Hook, you've gone too far!"
We convince Rian that Donahue is one of the good pirates and sit
down at our table, Rian between Andrew and me. "This is how we've
always sat," he tells Donahue with a five-year-old's sense of
complete history.
I ask Rian to take off his hat. "Is that a manner for fancy
places?" he asks. I nod, and he removes it. As he does so, our
server Diane France-Valliére appears from behind him with a small
stool to put it on.
"She poofed me!" Rian says delighted with both the stool and
France-Valliére's invisible service act. Her gentility and graceful
steps around our table make me feel as though we're dining in
Stendahl's Paris. She gently unfolds the crisp linen napkins and
places them on our laps. Their weight is comforting. Rian brings it
to his face and breathes in, "Mmmm… summer."
France-Valliére addresses Rian with a small bow, "Good evening
monsieur. And what is your name?"
"Shhh!" Rian says. I look at him horrified.
"That's what my parents always call me in places like this, so
I'm changing my name to Shhh!" Rian explains matter-of-factly.
France-Valliére smiles playfully and hands us leather-bound
menus.
"I can't read this, I just turned five," Rian tells her, slightly
exasperated as he hands it to me. Browsing through the selections,
we eliminate those that remind him of cartoon characters. This rules
out venison (Bambi), duck (Daffy), beef (Daisy) and chicken (too
close to a plucky little rooster named Ruddy). That leaves the
unadorable halibut and potatoes.
"Are potatoes part of the Bread Society?" Rian asks. Like many
five-year-olds, he would like to survive on bread alone; he'd just
as soon form a club against vegetables. So when I ask him which ones
he'd like with dinner, he gives me his dark cherub look. "I want to
'gotiate," he says. Rian can make the haggling over vegetables and
dessert into a back-and-forth fiercer than Wimbledon. He never
misses a weak moment, which in this case arrives with the champagne
for Andrew and me, and France-Valliére's offer of a virgin crantini
of cranberry and orange juice to Rian.
"What's a virgin Mommy?"
"A very good, ummm, drink."
Andrew and I toast that we've lasted this long, and relax into a
whatever-happens-happens acceptance. On the table, our flute glasses
glow against the candlelight like flaming tulips.
Rian asks for the lime garnishing Andrew's glass of water and
puts it in his mouth to make a smiley face, as he does at home with
orange slices. His face crumples at its sour taste and he exclaims,
"Pucker!" Unfortunately, Rian is still working on the phonetic
distinction between "p" and "f" and a few diners turn and stare. But
they've already become charcoal smudges in my side vision.
A junior waiter brings five types of bread in a large silver
basket. Rian is about to reach into the basket, when I gently catch
his arm and ask him to allow the server to place the bread on the
plate with his tongs.
"Spank-you very much," Rian says, with rakish, immoderate
laughter. Fortunately, the server doesn't distinguish the word and
nods at the polite, happy child. Rian drills out the centre of his
baguette and eats it, leaving behind an onion-ring-style crust.
He lifts the tiny silver dome covering the butter with a
flourish, proclaiming, "And now for my final finale, I present—the
tablecloth!" Like most children, he's always ready for magic. The
bread man is a sorcerer, trolls lurk in the fiery kitchen, there's
pixie dust on the curtains. He reminds me to look at a world filled
with enchantment.
When France-Valliére returns for our orders, Rian carves large
slices with his arms. "I would like big chocolate for dessert
please," he says.
"We have a chocolate pyramid that I think you'll love," she says.
"I'm one hundred excited!" Rian declares.
"And what would the gentleman like to start?" she asks.
"I'm a carnivore," Rian says, repeating the new word from last
night's dinosaur book. "I'll have bare fish, sort of mushy, and
potatoes."
"Perhaps a little steamed asparagus?"
"I will never, ever eat asparagus," Rian says. I give him The
Look and he adds glumly, "One carrot please... I'll happy up when I
see dessert"
Our amuse-bouches arrive: demitasses of diced oxtail meat set in
a potato and celery root cream sauce. I tell Rian it's like chicken
soup. He loves the doll-sized bowl and tries to get his spoon into
it. "You can pick it up to drink," I tell him. His eyes shine with
happiness. "Yum!"
After we finish, Rian stares dreamily at my necklace and says,
"Mommy you look as beautiful as an editor." In our home, editors are
elusive, mythical creatures who can never be pinned down.
Next come our appetizers. Andrew's is a sliver of roast deer in a
dark cognac-and-juniper-berry sauce. Rian, ever the soaring bird of
prey, eyes it across the table and asks if it's chocolate sauce. I
have the lobster bisque, and he watches in wonder as the waiter
pours the soup around the delicate piece of lobster in my bowl. Rian
ploughs his appetizer of scallops around his plate bulldozer-style
before eating them.
For a while we eat in silence, broken only by the soft clink of
the silverware. Hunger is the most reflective of our bodily
appetites, so perhaps that's why dining out has such a civilizing
effect—even on untamed offspring.
As France-Valliére clears our dishes, she asks Rian if he liked
his appetizer.
"My taste buds loved it," he says. "They're saying, 'More, more,
more!'"
But dining at a good restaurant isn't just about food; it's also
about abundance and connection, with the earth and with each other.
Dinner has its own calm from goal-oriented lunch: there's no meeting
to rush back to and no Victorian inhibition about alcohol and
enjoyment. We sit in each other's company as we slowly sate one
layer of hunger and then the next.
As we start drinking the bordeaux, Andrew and I reach that point
of giving-over; the moment where the warmth flows through the tops
of your hands and over your thighs, when the crease between your
brows smoothes out as you let go of small irritations.
I wonder if we're imprinting on Rian with this experience—as
wildebeests do when they take their young away from the herd. Will
he spend his life searching for the tastes, smells and sounds that
remind him of when his parents seemed the most relaxed and happy and
expansive? In making him hungry for the world, we are also giving
him the desires that will eventually lead him away from us. But
perhaps it's not a bad gift for a child—Escoffier once said that
gustatory pleasure remains when all others have left us.
As we wait for our next course, Rian becomes fascinated with the
pepper grinder. He investigates its mechanics and admires how its
dark-mottled contents contrast with the tablecloth, his plate and
his lap, until I gently move it to the other side of the table.
Our entrées are delivered under big silver domes and the servers
uncover them in choreographed unison. "Do it again!" Rian says
clapping. And they do.
His face lights up as he bites into the tender halibut, a tribute
to the first fish that swam free—it needs heavy sauce like Eve
needed Revlon. He eats with a feral hunger, like a crouching bobcat.
While I eat my own dinner, I devour his expression, an early
vocabulary of my own, and envy him the joy of discovering his
gustatory pleasures: to feel for the first time a deeply savoury
taste glide across your tongue or the heat against the inside of
your cheeks.
His face is soft and pink, a chick down illumined by the candle.
His eyes hold only what is in front of him, but I can see the
thousands of wonderful meals ahead of him, a banquet of
possibilities stretching into the future.
But at this moment, Rian picks at his three carrots like a bomb
disposal expert, then asks France-Valliére for a "free refill of the
virgin."
"Certainly monsieur, it's on the house."
Rian looks up at the ceiling with interest. "Where?"
When she cleans the table with a silver wand, Rian says
admiringly, "She's got a snowplow for crumbs." His bliss crests when
she brings dessert, the promised chocolate pyramid. He does a happy
wiggle-dance in his seat. "Deeelicious!"
With chocolate smears across his face and his eyes aflame with
sugar and cocoa, Rian looks like a swarthy preschool pirate. He eats
slowly with seraphic equanimity, almost purring. His fist rests on
the table like a small satin cushion. We hold our gaze in a
flickering shaft of silent thoughts over the candlelight.
I wonder if he'll remember this dinner when he is my age and
tonight is a fading photograph with ragged edges. Perhaps some
sensations are strong enough to be salted into memory. And perhaps
we know when they're not and start to miss some moments even as we
are in them.
Donahue returns to ask how our meal was. "It was super-duper!"
Rian says. "Do you ask everyone that or just us 'cause there's a kid
at the table?"
"We want everyone to have a super-duper meal," Donahue replies.
"But I'm especially pleased that you did."
As we get ready to leave, I ask Rian how he feels. He searches in
his mind for the right phrase the way he rummages through his
dress-up trunk, knowing that what he wants is probably at the
bottom. "I'm a speck sad to go," he finally says quietly.
A whitecap of crazy love for him washes over my heart. We walk
out of the restaurant into the dark blue night, light-limbed, warm
and full. Then Rian clutches my hand and points excitedly to two
blinking street lights about a mile down the road.
"Look mommy," he exclaims. "It's the second star to the right—Neverland!"
If You Go
Signatures is open for lunch Tuesday to Friday from 11:30 a.m.
to 2 p.m. and for dinner Tuesday to Saturday from 5:30 p.m. to 10:00
p.m. Entrées $30-$45. All major credit cards accepted. Wheelchair
accessible. For reservations, call 613-236-2499. The restaurant is
located in Le Cordon Bleu Ottawa Culinary Arts Institute, 453
Laurier Avenue East, Ottawa, Ontario.
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