The pandemic has had a tremendous affect on the restaurant business throughout the world. Old establishes restaurants, have closed down. Newer ones, are cutting hours, and days of operation due to, food shortages, and lack of employees. I believe, the restaurant landscape has changed forever, sad to say.
I started thinking about my experiences of fine dining. Now having lived most of my life in New York City, I have had the good fortune to experience many of the hundreds of fine dining restaurants located there. It brought back an experience of having dinner at the CIA. No, not that place in Washington, DC, although they probably have a great cafeteria, I mean the Culinary Institute of America, one of the top culinary schools in the world.
The CIA is an American private college, and culinary school specializing in culinary, baking, and pastry arts education. Myself, and a group of friends went to the school’s primary campus which is located in Hyde Park, New York, in the Hudson River Valley, probably no more than fifty miles north of New York City. There were four of us, and we decided we would drive up for dinner one night. When we called for a reservation, we were astounded that there was a six-month waiting list.
At last, our evening for dinner finally came. When we arrived, we were ushered to a very comfortable table for four. After choosing our three-course meal, we settled down to enjoy some very good red wine. We found out that the senior class members were the chef’s, and the other classes, both assisted them, and were the servers. We had our own waiter, who explained in detail every item on the menu. This was going to be a fantastic meal, and we weren’t in a hurry to eat, just to relax and enjoy the experience.
As we eyed our first course that came out, and about to be served, the fire alarm sounded, and we had to evacuate the building. Of course, we took our wine with us, I mean, we didn’t know what was actually happening, and how long of an interruption we were going to have. We were only outside for a half hour, which allowed us to finish all the wine we had. Apparently, there wasn’t a fire, just a false alarm.
When we went back to our table, our waiter apologized that the entire dinner, because of the wait could not be served, and they were going to start from scratch. That was fine with us, especially with some new complimentary bottles of wine. The entire meal was fantastic. Every dish in every course was cooked to perfection. I remember that one of our group had ordered a fruit of some kind for dessert. When the waiter, in reality, a chef in training, brought it out, he placed it in his hand, and with a paring knife, made a series of cuts. When he opened his hand, the fruit came apart in perfect pieces, all the same size. Now that was worth waiting six months for.
