Eatings 2

I realised that I ran out of enthusiasm before I described the second restaurant experience.

When G, the german speaking babysitter first applied to us, she gave us a referee to contact, who said that she only babysat once, and was a bit useless. But we employed G anyway - she turned out to be nice, but a bit useless. Well, she was OK when she turned up, but she had a habit of disappearing. Anyway, this referee, called B, mentioned that she owned a cafe - coincidentally a cafe that I went to for a beer when I came here for my interview.

Even more coincidentally, this woman sends her children to the same pre-school that we do, so we thought we should go to the cafe one day. So we did. I ride past it on the way home, so I met S and the boys at a playground, and then we went there.

They had interesting German beer, so I drank some of that, and the boys had apple juice. We ordered food, but they thought that we wanted it in batches (they seemed to arbitrarily decide that some things were starters). I had chips (which weren't chips, of course) and salsa, and guacamole. The chips were either impressively fresh, or alternatively they had sprinkled some oil on them, and then microwaved them. S had a salad (which was supposed to be a main course, but never mind).

Then for what turned out to be the main course, S had some cheesy potato things, and I had spätzle (which I've always pronounced 'spetchley', both of which are traditionally swiss. (They weren't called cheesy potato things). Spatzle is a weird food, a little like pasta - we used to have it occasionally when we were young, at my grandparents, and my father used to make it occasionally. However, what it was, and how to make it, had (I imagined) died with them. Obviously if I did want to have it, I wasn't going to get far asking for spetchley.

The first time I went to Germany to see S, we went to a wedding, and there was some weird pasta stuff to eat. And when I tasted it, it was spetchley! It was quite a revelation, I had this very vague memory of it in the mists of my memory, but when I tasted it again, it was exactly the same. Since then, whenever I've seen it in restaurants, I've ordered it. (Which is pretty rare - I'd estimate that that's the 3rd time I've had it since the time at the wedding. Once of those times was in Ikea in Bielefeld).

Anyway, where was I. Oh yes, the starters were quite tasty, but the main courses were pretty disappointing - the spätzle (as I should probably call it) was OK, but it was a really small portion. Cheesy potatoes were, well, cheesy potatoes. Anf the boys had a pizza. However, because they had had fries for their starter, they weren't desperately interested. And the fact that the pizza was disgustingly inedible probably didn't help.

Time dragged on, and the cafe turned into slightly more of a bar than a cafe, with the kind of people in it who hang around at Venice Beach when all of the tourists have left. Who aren't necessarily unpleasant, but might be thought of as a little weird. Some people were playing pool, which D and A were very interested in - although it had to be explained to them several times that they weren't to touch the balls. When the balls went in the holes, they ran around to watch them roll through the window.

When we left, without our asking, they packed the pizza in a takeaway box for us to take. We'll give it another day, to make sure it's completely impossible to eat, and then we'll throw it away.