SAM'S FOOD REVIEW @ GOLDEN DOME

20 FEBRUARY, SATURDAY, DINNER

Tonight, the Golden Dome was serving a 10 course meal, with every course being about 5 bites, it worked out to be a long drawn 50 bites meal. You knew you were fine dining if you were counting the bites. Normal food was measured by the number of plates or bowls, but here, even if the plate was the size of an elephant's ear, there would only be 5 bites on it, sometimes spread out, with a bit of sauce and fruit or a mint leaf decorating the white space.

It was a very unnatural way to eat. Rich people were so weird. I mean, we dress up in huge dresses and stiff suits, line up to alight from our cars, sit at our table with nothing but a drink and wait for everyone else. After that, they talk about the meal that was about to be serve for a good 20 minutes, before serving the food like the beginning of a song and dance number, and then they let the food trickle out oh, so slowly from the kitchen... to the few hundred starving wolves. Each plate was decorated with edible things, like art, and presented to us one by one. Even the soup was served in a large dish with a tiny depression in the center. I counted exactly 10 spoons of soup in that white porcelain crater (0 bites - you can't bite soup). It also had a bread stick (3 bites - but only because it was too long to fit in your mouth whole. If you were rude enough to fold it, it would be 1 bite).

The roast duck was a delicious disappointment. It turned out to be just a wad of roasted duck skin, rolled in a small thin square of steamed crepe with a bit of cucumber and spring onions and sweet brown sauce. It was delicious! BUT they only served each guest 2 bite-size pieces. At least that was just one of the entrees and not the main dish.

They served several entrees before the main dish including really weird stuff like jellyfish noodles and what looked like red octopus, but all in a few bites each, and spaced out by waiting times where I suppose you could be socializing and taking selfies, but for hungry less socially-inclined wolves (namely, me), it was like high class torture.

I took this in between time to finish my pokey sticks. Mate gave me a look.

"What?" I asked, "Do you want one?"

One. Since he was my Mate and all, I shall spare one single strawberry infused stick, but not a single stick more.

Mate shook his head, "Doesn't eating those in between the dishes mess with your palette?"

My palette was perfectly happy, thank you very much!

But it turned out that you were supposed to savor (not chomp or gulp down) each bite, and experience the textures and flavors, and then cleanse your palette with the wine or tea for the next tantalizing dish. Apparently food was art in your mouth. IKR. HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Halfway through, just as I thought the food couldn't come any slower, Alpha James spoke to the waiter serving us, "Why are you rushing the dishes out? The food is good, but if you serve so quickly, no one would have time to enjoy it."

Now that I looked up, I saw that Luna Edith was one dish behind us. The waiter had placed the next dish in front of her. Luna Edith ate very slowly.

"See," Alpha James gestured at the rest of us at the table, "We all have to swallow everything down to keep up. What kind of service is this?"

Ah no, Alpha James, we weren't rushed, we always ate at this speed...

"I'm very sorry, Alpha." The waiter bowed, "We were running behind schedule... and...urm...I'll feedback to the kitchen. Terribly sorry. I'll see what we can do."

"Yes, thank you." Alpha James nodded.

"Thank you, Alpha." The waiter bowed and then he looked at the next dish stacked up on his tray.

Alpha James sighed, "This one, you can serve it for now. But please don't rush the other dishes."

"Yes, alpha. Thank you alpha!" The waiter bowed again and quickly finished serving the rest of the dishes before scurrying off to inform the kitchen.

I looked at the really cute prawn in the center of the square plate. It was shelled, and all that was left was a plump light orange curl, coated in a thin crispy tempura, and then dipped and rolled in some kind of light green sauce, and then topped with a tiny mountain for bright orange little balls. Tobiko. Ki used it in my sushi before. He said they were roe from Flying Fish. I thought it was the most amazing thing I had ever tasted. Flying Fish. Wow.

My mouth watered. There was a weird smell from the green sauce though... I paused. Then I sniffed the dished more carefully - definitely the sauce. I looked at my prawn completely smeared with the light green stuff. Then I carefully picked off the tobiko.

"You're not eating the prawn?" Mate asked, "It's good."

His was already half eaten. For a guy, Mate ate really slowly and took really small bites. I could fit the entire prawn in my mouth at one go. It looks like it was going to take him two.

Maybe he got it from his mum. Now with the prawn dish in front of her, Luna Edith looked like she was struggling behind a short queue of food that demanded her immediate consumption.

"Eat slowly." Alpha James told her, "The plates aren't going to run away."

Haha. Hahahaha.

"What's the green stuff?" I asked.

"Wasabi." Mate said, "But this one is very mild."

"Sam, try it. Don't be picky." Mum said.

I gave the prawn a misgiving look and then I popped it into my mouth whole. Oh! Hot! Not the wasabi, the prawn was still really hot!

"Princess..." Mate looked really bemused, "That's too big to eat at one go."

"She's like your mother." Alpha James instructed, "You should have cut it into small pieces for her."

It was not too big. My mouth was huge! It was just too hot, and Oooooohhhh I really didn't like wasabi. Didn't like it at all.

Mum rubbed my back, she looked amused at my reaction, "It's always good to try something new."

I cleansed my palate with coke and declared, "I don't like wasabi."

"It's an acquired taste." Mate smirked at me.

Why would anyone suffer to acquire a taste for more suffering? I really couldn't understand it.

Ah, but the whole of tonight's dinner was a kaleidoscope of things I couldn't understand - and I wasn't talking about the words on the menu. No, dinner at the Golden Dome was like entering an abstract art gallery and taking a bite of everything they were exhibiting. I wouldn't be surprised if this was some custom they had imported from an alien planet. Hahaha.

And you know what the most shocking thing was? THERE WAS NO MAIN COURSE! Or if you preferred, everything after the duck skin and soup was main course. I was so dismayed when they served the cod - it was a perfect silver of cod cooked to perfection with garlic and cherry tomatoes and whatever else that fashionable taste buds liked this season, but the entire cod was the size of two sticks of kit kat. I kid you not.

I would probably need a Samburger when we got back to the hotel.

Dessert was the hugest bummer. We're talking about a boil pear covered with chocolate syrup. Who boiled their pears? I'm sorry, I meant poached pears - same difference! The only reason I didn't get mad about the soft cooked sad pear sprinkled with gold flakes was the fact that the hot pear sat atop a little mound of vanilla ice-cream. I really didn't understand it. Why go through all the trouble to get golden pears in the middle of winter, and peel off their skin (i.e. the golden part by the way), and then poach it till it was a sourish soft sad little thing?

It had to be an accident in the kitchen. Like "Opps! Clumsy me dropped all the crisp peeled pears into the pot of boiling water."

And then, "Oh no, what a waste of premium grade, glass house grown, golden pear!"

"No problem! Get the vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup!"

"Great, and add some gold flakes just so it looks expensive."

Vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup can salvage anything. Once, when Savy had first picked up baking, she made a coffee cake for Dad's birthday. At least it was supposed to be a coffee cake. She didn't have ground coffee power - our home only had instant coffee back before Ki. So I told her that they were probably the same thing anyway. We ended up taking a weird broken coffee lava cake out of the oven. It was very unpretty - sort of like the roads outside The Langston 2.0 right now, if you poured coffee into all the craters. Savy despaired (and so did I). We reached for the freezer for some comfort ice-cream. And then I got an idea. Technically, the cake tasted okay. I poured out the coffee into a mug. Then I used a fork to smash the cake part and then we pressed the broken cake into the bottom of a glass pan, and then a layer of vanilla ice cream, and then more broken cake. Savy drizzled the coffee back over the cake. I found a bottle of chocolate syrup and emptied it zig zags across it. Our first Tiramisu.

"This...this... Poires Belle Helene is very nice." Luna Edith said, "Not too sweet."

Yeah, the next time Savy and I accidentally boil our fruit, it would be our first Poires Belle Helene too. Hahahaha.

I nibbled a bit of the pear because I didn't want Mum to say I was being picky in front of everyone (mostly the Lorents), and then I ate the ice cream.

"Do you want mine?" Bell asked. I eyed his boiled pear and shook my head, "Maybe the ice cream."

"You don't like fruit?" Bell asked.

I'm not sure why what I liked or didn't like had anything to do with him, "Just not when its cooked and sour."

"I dislike sour things. I don't eat sweets in general either." Bell informed me.

I pushed my plate right up next to his, and rolled his ball of ice cream into it, "Then you're missing out. Sweets are the best kind of food."

Bell made a face at that, so I couldn't help but add, "They even have their own food group."

"Junk food?" Bell hazarded.

I shook my head, "Dessert. Dessert is the most important part your daily diet."

I was just kidding, but then Bell looked thoughtful, "I suppose that's why you're so sweet."

Eh, what?

Mum overheard and giggled. When I turned to her, she looked away and asked Luna Edith how she had enjoyed the afternoon tour. Our parents had both taken the same tour bus around the Gold City Heritage sites.

"I've lost count of the number of times I've sat this tour." Alpha James grumbled, "Every time we come, my luna would want to go."

Luna Edith used to be from the Gold Packlands. She liked taking the tour, just to see what had changed.

"The historical buildings here are beautiful." Mum said, "It never gets old."

And then the adults laughed at her play with words.

"How was the yacht party, Sam?" Mum asked.

At this point, might I remind everyone of Mum's golden rule - if you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything. So I had to make effort to only say the things that I had something nice to talk about, "The boat was really big and white, and the chicken kebab was delicious."

The adults nodded. Surprisingly, that was an acceptable answer.

Bell looked amused, but he didn't say anything.

"It's too cold for yachting in winter." Alpha James shook his head, "Young people don't know how to follow the seasons."

"I heard pikes and trout are good fishing in icy waters." Dad said.

Alpha James blinked at that, and then he laughed, "Yes. They might as well do something useful after going through all the trouble to take the yacht out of storage."

Whenever Dad and Alpha James talked, I always got the feeling they were on completely different wavelengths.

"Fishing sounds like fun." I decided.

"It's not." Bell said immediately, "No."

Eh? "What? Why?" Mostly, what made him the boss of me? Why did he think I was asking his permission?

"No, princess. I have better things to do than stand around waiting for the fish to bite."

"Maybe we can go to the river and catch salmon like bears!" I suggested, "That's like instant sashimi right?"

Which was also eating salmon like bears.

The whole table looked a little shocked at the suggestion. Why? Did they never think that would be fun? I had always thought it would be ever since seeing it on the discovery channel. It looked fun to be a bear. I pretended to be a bear all summer that year. I also called Savy Goldilocks till she stopped talking to me, but we were family - Papa Bear, Mama Bear, Baby Bear, and Goldilocks.