(on a full stomach) from start to finish.
Yes, yes already, I know, I said finish.
Before we start on this journey, it is my duty to explain to you the three stages of Love in the game that is modern-day dating.
Think Bridget Jones, Sex and the City, 9½ Weeks (the fridge scene!).
Time to wake up and smell the testosterone. Baby, times they are a-changing. Our generation is dealing with a completely different set of rules, which we are playing by ear and making up as we go along. The days of ‘Forsaking All Others Forever and Ever, Amen’ are but a cloud of well-trodden, soggy confetti in the fairytale nuptials of our wildest imaginations. Divorce is on the up; true love is proving to be more elusive than ever. It is a bona fide serial-dating, bed-hopping jungle out there.
Deal with it.
We live in a world of serial, but temporary, monogamy; a smorgasbord of endless possibility, where a broken heart is no longer terminal but instead easily and endlessly restorable. It happens the moment yet another cutie with the right combination of looks, style and, if we are lucky, cash, appears. He/she will have that certain something, that je ne sais quoi that enables him/her to turn our heads and make our bruised and battered little hearts beat, to the sound of their drum, that little bit faster.
Hey presto! We are no longer heartbroken, actually we are the opposite: heartsick, horny and in lust. In fact, off, once again, with the fairies.
Today we seek not so much Mr Right as Mr Right Now, thus a staggering percentage of relationships exist in the sphere that is:
‘The Beginning’ ‘The Middle’ ‘The End’
Hey, back off! I didn’t write the rules, so don’t shoot the messenger.
Come on, don’t get too disheartened, of course True Love exists. Look around you, surely you know loads of people in successful relationships, happily married with a couple of kids, white picket fence, roses over the door, etc? Whaddaya mean they’re all divorced? There is no place in our world for such blatant (though, some would say, justified) cynicism. I as the author reserve the right to keep an open mind. One day my prince will come, as will yours.
Honest.
Meanwhile, in the parallel universe that is Serial Monogamy, I will embark on every new relationship with relish and have myself an absolute ball. Life is too short to mope around and beat one’s, hopefully ample, breast over yet another lost love. Not all men are bastards, just as all women are not gold-digging ball-breakers: this is but an urban myth. I hope.
So there you have it, in most cases life is not the fairytale we were told it was going to be but, hey, neither is it so bad. We may have to kiss a lot of toads before we find our prince but … kissing the right toads, in the right places, whilst feasting on the perfect morsel, can actually be a lot of fun.
Please enjoy your Serial Monogamy in the knowledge that one day, when you are old and grey, rocking in your chair surrounded by your gloriously doting grandchildren (or you’re the oldest swinger in town, suckin’ down a Margarita with your latest toy boy/girl), you won’t regret the things you did.
Only the things you didn’t.
Your words are my food, your breath my wine, you are everything to me.
SARAH BERNHARDT
Right, I’m glad that’s over with. Now let’s have some fun. Let’s talk food, my next favourite subject.
It is my belief that food plays a significant role in the seduction, the pleasuring and the binding together of two newly-dating individuals. This first became apparent when, at the tender age of 16 and a total innocent, I was taken out to dinner on a proper date for the first time ever. Mitch was 24 years old and a friend of a friend, he used to come over to my house and we’d spend hours listening to music and just hanging out. When he asked me to go to dinner I was over the moon, but my parents less so and only allowed me to go out with this ostensibly much older man on the condition that I was home by 11pm, sharp.
He picked me up at 7.30pm in his rather flash and very red sports car and took me, at somewhat high speed, to a very ‘in’ bistro in Mayfair. Walking into that jewelled, cavelike restaurant was the most amazing moment of my thus far rather sheltered 16-year-old life. Everywhere I looked there was glamour, I felt like I’d arrived. As a family we’d always gone to lovely restaurants but this was different, this was very grown up, utterly sophisticated and terribly sexy.
We were seated at a corner table with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, aka The Widow, which to this day remains my absolute favourite champagne. He ordered for both of us. (So manly.) We started with huge pink prawns dripping with butter and oozing garlic, which we ate with our fingers, catching the butter with our tongues as it dripped.
That was the precise moment that little Alex Antonioni realised that food was sexy. Really, really sexy. My mother had made this same dish a thousand times and it had never had quite this effect on me. This was indeed a revelation.
The prawns were followed by a perfect roast chicken whose ancestry lay in Bresse, France. It was presented to us on a silver salver; a whole roast chicken, crispy and golden and surrounded by perfectly turned baby carrots, tiny little roast potatoes and bunches of watercress to mop up the juices. An impossibly well-dressed waiter carved it in front of us at the table whilst all the other diners looked on enviously. Apparently you had to order this particular dish 48 hours in advance, Mitch had done just that.
I felt like a princess.
Pudding was Crêpes Suzette, which involved more tableside theatricals. Although by this point I think the waiter was just showing off, it was glorious. Piping-hot sticky crêpes were served whilst on fire and to a 16 year-old on a first date it was the absolute height of elegance. I felt like Audrey Hepburn somewhere between Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Pygmalion.
The memory of that meal has remained with me always. Over the course of that evening Mitch, who in reality was just ok-looking, became a prince amongst men. In the flickering candlelight of that restaurant, bewitched by the combination of ice-cold champagne, delicious food and flirtatious, giggly banter, I would have agreed to pretty much anything Mitch had in mind. I was utterly seduced.
My parents knew exactly what they were doing by not letting their daughters out of their sight for too long and when, after another round of coffees and a large Amaretto, I realised to my horror, Cinderella-like, what the time was I somewhat unsteadily left my idyll and Mitch escorted me home.
I was over an hour late. My father’s fury, conveyed via a colourful selection of choice words and the slamming of the front door, ensured Mitch never called me again.
Coward!
I never looked at food in quite the same way ever again, hence the concept of Eat Me; a collection of anecdotes, suggestions, aphrodisiacs, nibbles, rude food, drinks, dinners, lunches, bed picnics, quotes, feasts, snacks and comfort foods alongside a selection of menus to entertain friends and family that will ensure your lover’s full attentions and, well, who knows …
There is no sincerer love than the love of food.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Asinine, garbled conversations