Gourmet Club

Four other couples and my lovely wife Sarah and I have been part of a Gourmet Club for over 15 years. Have you ever done this? We take turns hosting a dinner, with the hosts choosing the theme and each couple bringing a course that matches that theme. Each couple gets a different course each time for five meals, then we go out to dinner the sixth month and start the cycle again.

 My former boss was in a similar group, but “similar” is a tricky word: his group chose themes such as French Countryside, Northern Italian, Louisiana Low Country. Our group chooses theme such as Favorite Foods of Elvis, Food You Can Eat With Dentures (not that any of us wear them), Woodstock Generation, Foods That Begin With The Letter C.

 I’m pretty sure I know which group has more fun.

 Of course, there was the night the theme was the Holy See, during the days of Pope John Paul II, which would mean Polish and Italian food (for you non-Catholics), and the appetizers were dips and Communion wafers. Another meal featured a chocolate cake that included the lid from a can of Hershey’s syrup, inadvertently baked into the cake. (“I wondered where that lid went.”) A third, also a dessert, was, shall we say, a touch dry when someone misread tsp. (teaspoon) as TB (tablespoon) and put in triple the amount of baking powder listed in the recipe.

 Our other favorite activity, though it began inadvertently, was driving restaurants out of business. The list of restaurants that went under shortly after we ate there as a group is growing: Baron’s 2000, a Mexican place on Cold Spring Lane, two Spanish restaurants downtown (though one reopened later in a different location, so we can only claim partial credit), Rudy’s, a few others I can’t recall. We talked about going to Haussner’s and they promptly announced they were closing. We ate at the restaurant at Route 40 and Rolling Road, which I think is now a mattress store, twice, when it was a Mexican restaurant and when it was King Farouk’s.

 In fact, we’re thinking of hiring ourselves out, so restaurant owners who want to drive a competitor out of business should contact me.