THE BLOODY IGNORANT TOURIST

     It was a small restaurant in the heart of the French countryside, and I was having a catch-up dinner à deux on the patio with a long-lost college chum, a willowy blonde English rose whom for the purpose of the story I’ll call Attila the Hun.

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

       As far as the food went, it had been a perfectly nice meal, an honest prix fixe, with the asperges vinaigrette and truites aux amandes washed down nicely with a bottle of flintily cold Sancerre. But by the time the dessert arrived, the patio had turned chilly and I was beginning to remember just why it was that Attila and I had been lost to each other for quite so long. I decided that I’d had my fill of cold and flinty for the evening, and would avail myself of the option, at least as far as the wine went, to turn to something warmer and more friendly instead.

       “Can I have a glass of red wine?” I asked the waiter when he brought the tarte tatin.

       The waiter looked from the tarte tatin to me and then back to the empty Sancerre bottle.

       “But you’ve been drinking white wine,” he said. He nodded, approvingly. “As is correct with truite.”

       “Yes, but we’ve finished the white wine,” I said, because, oh, believe me, we had. “And now I’m in the mood for a glass of red.”

       The waiter looked back again at the dessert. His brow furrowed in consternation.

       “But red wine doesn’t go with tarte tatin,” he said.

       “Not classically, no,” I agreed. “But it’s what I want right now anyway.”

       The waiter’s frown deepened.

       “But the flavors don’t complement each other,” he repeated.

       “I know they don’t,” I repeated in my turn. Then, once again, since this appeared to be complicated for him and I was all for being helpful, “But, you see, it’s what I want.”

       The waiter thought about this for a moment, then raised an authoritative finger.

       “Attendez,” he said, before disappearing back into the restaurant.

       “He’s a bit bossy, isn’t he?” I commented to Attila.

       Attila pursed her mouth. “He’s right, though,” she said, because Attila knows these things. Attila, I was remembering, knows many things. “Red wine really doesn’t go with tarte tatin.”

       Believe it or not, I knew that too. Actually, being a card-carrying greedy pig, I know quite a lot about food and a certain amount about wine; but I also happen to hold to the philosophy that – while I personally have yet to be discovered cracking open the 1982 Château Lafite to wash down my Fruit Loops  – what I happen to want to drink with what I happen to want to eat is on the whole nobody’s gastronomic business but my own.

       “I wasn’t suggesting he should drink it,” I said. “I was saying I want to drink it myself.”

       Attila snorted softly.

       “Voilà!” The waiter was back in front of us, beaming proudly. With a flourish, he presented to me a new wine list. “Nos vins de dessert!” he cried happily.

       And a fine figure of a dessert wine list it was, featuring a generous selection, with each wine clearly described and reasonably priced.

       “Sauternes?” suggested the waiter. “Muscat? Perhaps a glass of porto?”

       Except there still remained just the one small problem.

       “You see, this isn’t what I want,” I explained. And, commendably resisting the impulse to add in a quick chorus of Message In A Bottle, “I want a glass of red wine. Nothing fancy, just your vin de la maison would be perfect.”

       The waiter began to twitch just a little.

       “But you can’t have red wine with tarte tatin,” he said.

       “But, you see, I can,” I told him. “I’ve done it before, and I promise you, it turned out just fine.”

       “But the flavors don’t match,” he said.

       “But it’s what I want,” I said.

       The waiter by now was all but chewing his knuckles in agitation. Suddenly, his face cleared.

       “J’ai une bonne idée,” he said, and disappeared back into the restaurant again.

       Attila regarded me coldly.

       “I wish you’d stop making such a fuss,” she said. English roses hate it when people make a fuss.

       “I’m not making a fuss,” I said. “I asked for a glass of wine in a restaurant. If anyone’s making a fuss, it’s him, not me.”

       Attila rolled her eyes and sighed.

       The waiter danced back to the table, now bearing an unopened bottle of something icy-looking and bubbly.

       “Ça y est!” he sang. “La solution au problème. Vin mousseux made from local peaches. It’s the perfect complement to tarte tatin.”

       He showed me the bottle. The wine was pale pinkish-orange, and beads of condensation ran down the bottle’s sides. It made me feel cold just to look at it.

       “I’m going to open it,” he said.  “Just for you so that you can try it, and then you’ll see. C’est formidable.”

       “Please don’t open it,” I said. “You can’t cork it back up again and I’d hate it to go to waste. And I’m sure it’s excellent, but I promise you that however good it is, I won’t want it because,” and here we went again, “it’s not what I want.”

       The waiter winked at me reassuringly.

       “J’insiste!” he said. He opened the bottle, poured me a taste, and stood back, smiling confidently.

       “C’est bon, non?” he said.

       “C’est bien bon,” I agreed because it really was very bon indeed. Nevertheless, there remained still seated squarely at the table, smiling brightly, with elbows akimbo and napkin tucked neatly into collar, our dear old friend of my original request.

       “But it’s not what I want,” I reminded him, gently. And taking it, yet again, slowly from the top, “What I want is a glass of red wine.”

       The waiter’s face fell. His head drooped, his shoulders slumped. Mournfully, he retrieved the spurned bottle of vin soon-to-be-formerly mousseux made from local peaches and trailed back indoors.

       Attila glared at me.

       “Now you’ve hurt his feelings,” she said. English roses are particularly tender about the feelings of waiters, although they appear less concerned with the feelings of the customer when the waiter has overridden her request. “This is really embarrassing.”

       “I’m not the one who’s making it embarrassing,” I said. “I’ve asked him for something perfectly simple and he’s refusing to give it to me. If he’d just give me what I’m asking for, I’d shut up about it and we could all move on.”

        Attila had had enough. Her eyes narrowed as she drew back and readied her impeccably cosmopolitan and sophisticated self to move in for the kill.

       “If I were him,” she said, slowly and woundingly, “I’d just think, ‘bloody ignorant tourist,’ pour you that glass of wine, and go back to the kitchen and … laugh at you.”

       Call me insensitive, but I find that the hours of the early morning are few that I spend brooding over a stranger’s opinion of my taste in wine pairing; and meanwhile, I really – really – wanted that red wine.

       “I wish he would,” I said.

       Ask, as the good book says, and you shall receive. Barely had Attila retrieved her jaw from the portion of the table onto which it had fallen at this unspeakable declaration of the unthinkable when the waiter returned: his step was as slow as that of a man to the gallows, his gaze averted as he silently handed me the requested glass of vin rouge. He winced a little before turning on his heel to remove himself from the hideous scene which was about to ensue, leaving Attila to watch with silently deafening English rose disgust while I drank red wine with my tarte tatin.

       I am delighted to report that I enjoyed every mouthful.