Quality

When JC suggested that I join him and a small group of his friends at a Japanese restaurant, I thought, "Well, why not? A little delicate Japanese cuisine would really hit the spot. Some nice green tea, miso soup, small bowls containing weird morsels of things best not investigated, a few judicious belts from the sake bottle... sounds like fun!" So I agreed, and arranged to meet up with him and the others later that night.


By the time I'd wrangled my way through the busy Saturday evening traffic and found a parking space, activities which both involved a great deal of impotent shouting, I was in a slightly less than chipper mood, but I knew that once I was seated at a low table with a cup of green tea in front of me, I'd cheer up again. I called JC on my mobile to double-check the exact location of the restaurant. "Ah, change of plans," he said. "We couldn't get into the Japanese place. So we'll be going to Terrazza instead. You know where that is?"


I did indeed. I knew all too well. I don't know if I actually said, "Yep, that's the one in the NINTH CIRCLE OF HELL!", or just thought it, but either way my plans for an evening sampling fine, exotic delicacies evaporated like spilt sake on a teppanyaki hotplate.


Terrazza is a chain of franchised restaurants, dotted around the city's nouveau riche enclaves as if they were contractually obliged to build one whenever a suburb's BMW ownership rate tops 80%. They always occupy brand new prefab buildings, which are then slathered in limewash, terracotta tiles and moulded cement pillars, presumably with the intention that they look like a little slice of Tuscany. Of course they do not look like a little slice of Tuscany. They look like what they are - overreaching strip mall shopfronts that have been attacked by commercial designers armed with fake wooden shutters, antiquing paint and a solid brick of cocaine.


I switched off my phone, got out of my car and made my way over to the restaurant. Instead of following JC's suggestion that I wait inside for everyone else to arrive, I stayed outside, in the chilly winter night, hoping that between my arrival and the rest of the group's, a just and righteous God would rain heavenly fire upon the building and smite it from His good earth.


But no such luck. The others arrived, and I had no option but to follow them inside. Once we were seated, and duly harranged by a waitress about garlic breads and overpriced cocktails, I found myself sitting opposite a friendly, nuggety fellow who hadn't come across the Terrazza brand. "So, have you been here before?" he asked.


"I've been to the one in Nedlands for a couple of office functions," I replied.


"What's the food like?"


I wondered how to discreetly suggest that Satan's intimate body fluids were somehow involved, but I couldn't come up with anything appropriate. But I didn't want to lie. So I said, "It is what it is."


"That doesn't sound very encouraging."


I shrugged. "It's the truth."


I looked through the menu looking for something light and impossible to screw up. Traditional Tuscan specialties like nasi goreng and teriyaki chicken were likely to be all spice and no flavour. Any pasta dish was likely to be nothing but a bowl of dense carbohydrate lightly spattered with goop. Items containing seafood were definitely to be avoided - there's always the suspicion that these prawns or scallops didn't exactly leap from the ocean straight into the kitchen.


Eventually I went with the warm chicken salad. It was constructed like a monument to cost/benefit analysis. There was a lot of lettuce, just enough chicken to warrant its inclusion in the name of the dish, a tomato, some cucumber, perhaps half a raw red onion, half a dozen strips of violently dessicated eggplant, four olives, three cubes of feta cheese, and a good, soaking ladle-full of balsamic sweet chili dressing that made every part taste just like every other part.


I munched my way through it, carefully avoiding most of the onion and all of the cucumber (Note to Terrazza: mixing something that makes you belch with something that makes your breath stink = not such a brilliant idea). It wasn't bad, in the literal sense of the word. Mediocre, yes, but not actually bad. Fortunately the company was excellent, so the shortcomings of the restaurant faded into the background as we laughed and chatted and relaxed.


At the end of the meal, I asked the man sitting opposite me how his pasta had been. He thought for a moment, pursed his lips, and said. "You were right. It just was what it was."


And I suddenly found myself in a much better mood. If I can go out of an evening and turn just one person off restaurants like Terrazza that treat food as a necessary evil, then my suffering is not in vain. I am a patient martyr to the cause of deliciousness.


[assumes expression of saintly, slightly pained Catholic-style martyrdom until struck by delayed heavenly fire.]