Stuffed rice

 “Stuffed rice,” said the waiter, setting the plate in front of me.

“Pardon?” I said, staring at him, and then the plate, in disbelief.

It had started three days earlier when my editor, bless her rancid, fatty little soul, left.  She claimed she’d been headhunted by a news network looking to replace a recently-departed prime-time host, and while she was certainly fascist enough in her views for that to be possible, none of us actually believed it.  Still, we dutifully passed a card round (I took the liberty of writing fake messages from three made-up names to confuse her if she bothered to read it) and had a small collection for a leaving gift.  When that added up to mostly pocket lint, we wrapped up a stapler from the stationery cupboard and reluctantly agreed to spend an evening drinking with her instead.  Knowing full well that no-one would be able to agree on a location because no-one wanted her knowing where they liked to hang out, I proposed a bar/restaurant that had recently opened and that I would have to review anyway.  This wasn’t negatively received, so we ended up, nine of us sitting at a table for six, in Malhereusement.  The atmosphere was French, the menu appeared Swedish and the cooking seemed to be East European, all of which intrigued me enough to make a reservation to review it a few days later.  The drinks came fast enough that we managed to largely overlook the enforced company we were keeping, and most of managed a fairly civil send-off for her.

Someone, not me, did key her car afterwards, but that’s small potatoes; senior management have had much more expensive send-offs, and I’m not talking about the bill presented to accounts the next morning.

So, with the hang-over mostly subsided and an empty editor’s office awaiting a new incumbent, I made my way back to Malhereusement and attempted to peruse the menu.  My first problem was that the menu was indeed written in Swedish which I’ve never learned to speak.  The Blonde claims to speak some Norwegian but given the outrage caused in Barcelona when she attempted to speak Spanish I’ve never dared accompany her near a Scandinavian destination.  I waved a waiter, who waved back but didn’t move.  I waved a little more impatiently and he waved a little harder and eventually, after I yelled “Come here!” at him, I got some more service.

“I can’t read this,” I said, holding the menu out.

“Would you like me to read it to you?” he asked, sounding both polite and impertinent at the same time.  

“In English?” I said.  My editor, bless her holey, fungus-infested cotton socks, had a sense of humour like that of a pregnant cat trapped in a wheelie-bin and I’d had too many conversations like this with her.

“The menu is in, ah… Swedish,” said the waiter.  I forced a smile; the kind where your lips press so hard over your teeth that you can feel the skin stretching to ripping point.

“Then that would not be helpful,” I said.

“We have a Braille menu,” he said, turning as if to go and get it.

“I’m not blind,” I said tartly.  “I want a menu written in a language I speak.  English, for preference, but I can manage German, Swahili and Ancient Mesopotamian at a pinch.”  In fairness I haven’t touched Mesopotamian since university but I doubted that they’d have written the menu in a language that obscure.

I was wrong.  The waiter, dare I say gleefully, presented me with the menu written in Ancient Mesopotamian.  I blew the dust off it, and opened it and marvelled at the words before me.

I pointed at several items after it became clear that the waiter neither spoke nor wrote the language he’d handed me a menu in, and he wrote down their positions on the page — I watched him.  At no point was there a hint of an apology, or a suggestion that he might have carried this joke a little too far.  He took the menu away and a few minutes later presented me with a platter of flatbreads and some dips and I was pleasantly surprised to find them both edible and enjoyable.

And then he came with the starter, set it down in front of me, and said, “Stuffed rice.”

“Pardon?” I said, staring first at him and then at the plate.

It was true.  Someone, and I hope they were exceedingly well paid, had apparently hollowed out each individual grain of rice and then painstakingly stuffed them with a farce of onion, pepper and tomato.  I guessed that they’d been cooked in a mixture of wine and stock, and the rice was perfectly tender and slightly fluffy.  It was a complete inversion of the normal stuffed vegetable dish, very well executed, and left me wondering what kind of world I was sitting in.

“Someone keyed my car!” said a nasal voice, and my ex-editor sat down, uninvited at the table with me.  “Oh, are those stuffed maggots?”å