A and I have a new-fangled eating out plan that involves more lunches in place of dinners. There used to be a time, about 3 years ago, when we ate lunch out every Tuesday, which was (and is) my afternoon off. This was choked off when I expressed a compulsion to be more collegial with my colleagues at work, where lunching together is a daily ritual that involves all present; the commencement of the parade to the cafeteria is signaled by cries of “Any eaters?” and “Let’s eat!”. There follows about half-an-hour or so of convivial bull-shitting that can run the gamut from splashing about in cultural cross-currents to outright high-dives into political demagoguery, with The Polymath usually assuming the bridge as helmsman of the conversation. (His occasional absences, through vacation or otherwise, are keenly felt.)
I eased myself into the new-old eating-out routine by taking A out to the Brasserie V, which is a wooded re-incarnation of the Relish Deli (which used to be a cozy breakfast haunt and purveyor of hams and cheeses extraordinaire). What they’ve done is take out the entire counter (and its itinerant hams and cheeses) and replace it with a shiny new bar that features an impressive variety of beers, the majority of them Belgian, with many being on tap (14 that I counted). A still larger bottled selection is arrayed under the taps. They have a lunch menu that features one soup-du-jour and a selection of sandwiches, and a dinner menu that has continental offerings that might perhaps best be described as appealing to the discerning beer drinker. Straight-forward pan-searings of chickens and salmons seemed to leap out at one. None of this is meant to be a put-down; I haven’t tasted any of it, and it might well taste fabulous after a beer or three.
We did have lunch, though. I had a half-half order of the soup, which was chili, and the roast beef hot sandwich. The chili was delicious. Even A was impressed by it. They forgot to grill my sandwich but it tasted fine after two beers and samples of four or five other beers, cheerfully provided by the bartender (the service was uniformly neighborly and good-humored). A had an avocado BLT which she had no complaints about (no littote).
As for the beers, I had a tepid- just as it should be- Fullers London Pride for old times’ sake, followed by the Wittekerke, a pleasant and much lighter beer. I also had a half-pint of the Corsendonk brown ale, which was okay. A had a New Glarus Dancing Man, which is a fun wheat. She followed that up with a half-pint of the Wittekerke. Finally, we girded our loins and tried the raspberry lambic- I think it was Lindeman’s- and it was utterly vile. A “girly fruity beer” is one thing, and an abomination is quite another. Girls – and fruits- have their pride, too.
