I had lunch at Aqua recently, lovely until the dessert. I ordered coffee mouse with “Havana cream”. I expected something rum flavoured, but no, it was cigar flavoured. I’m open minded about that, but the flavour was unpleasant: peppery with a weird feeling in the throat. And I felt ill for the next few hours, presumably from the nicotine. Avoid.

Ken’s the family chef. He’s doing the low carb thing these days. One of the substitutes he makes is cauliflower rice; you put cauliflower in the food processor until it’s rice sized, then saute it quickly in butter. It’s delicious! You gotta love a diet where “saute in butter” is one of your main techniques.

Formal French table service includes a sauce spoon, a nearly-flat spoon with a notch in one side. (I grew up calling this a fish knife.) I thought I had it all figured out: you scoop up the sauce with it, put the spoon in your mouth, and enjoy the yumminess. So I did that on my last trip, and to my embarassment found my next two dishes were brought to me with actual spoons, not sauce spoons. Had I done something wrong? I think I was right.