Wednesday, March 14, 2018

HOLY TOADS

I went to the Tam O’Shanter restaurant again last Tuesday – old school, reliable, “delighting diners for over 90 years,” and quiet on a Tuesday night, in fact so quiet that they were having a trivia contest in the bar to drum up customers.
Usually when I go to the Tam (as we call it) I order the prime rib, but I wasn’t in the mood and so I went for the toad in the hole.
Now, you and I know that toad in the hole is a vat of Yorkshire pudding with sausages baked into the middle.
I worked out that I wasn’t going to get precisely that because the menu read “TOAD IN THE HOLE - diced filet mignon, yorkshire pudding, onions, mushrooms, kale, carrots, guinness gravy.”  And the waitress asked how I wanted the meat cooked – medium rare seemed to be the way to go.
When it came it looked like this (you'd think Guinness gravy would be darker, wouldn't you?):


It tasted very good, and probably superior to a genuine toad in the hole, but I still couldn’t shake the image I had in my head of what it ought to have been:


Maybe the Tam should give their dish a different name – possibly “Yorkshire pudding filled with stew”

         Still, you can forgive a surprising amount when you get to eat in a room that looks like this:


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