Competition No 3920
Set by John O'Byrne, 27 February
You were asked for an over-the-top restaurant review.
Report by Ms de Meaner
Quite, quite excellent. Welcome to the newcomers Lisette Davidson, Hazel Rea, Monica Ekemode and, lastly, Max Peterson, who wins on his first try. A star is born! Hon menshes to Carolyn Beckingham, Katie Mallett, David Silverman, Josh Ekroy, Geoff Horton, G M Davis and Watson Weeks. All were superb, with but a cigarette paper between them and this week's three winners, who get £20 each. The overall winner also gets the Tesco vouchers and that person is . . . Bill Greenwell.
The symphonic psalm of our prelapsarian albino crabmeat nuzzled the infant, Lincoln-green avocado and palpitated the rubescent flesh of the grapefruit, moistening and massaging our taste-buds with the subtlety of new dew on the silk-skirted shores of Phrygia, and titivating our palates with the whimsy of a distant viola player, steeped in Bartok. The ripped and militant rocket provided the ragged interstices, and brought a lovelorn, almost sarcastically peppery extravagance to the scent of dissident seaside, as if apostle spoons were to be found in a trove of East Indian doubloons. And the light smur of oil in which the whole was ecstatically macerated! We tasted the witchery of Endor, the hint of syzygy which only a tribal pirate confronted by a glinting cutlass might imagine, the tintinnabulary of wind-chimes on a softening March evening when the skin flinches with pleasure at the touch of the rain's tincture, the frisson of a courtesan's tongue as it whispers its lascivious delirium to the inner sanctum of a sultan's auricle. Polyphony was never like this. The main course . . .
Bill Greenwell
The initial aroma of browning meat is redolent of languid barbecues on late summer evenings in the Languedoc with Rhapsody in Blue flooding out from the farmhouse windows. Soon, as the silken strings of onions caramelise to the gold of mermaid's hair, childhood memories crowd in: Sousa marches, fetes, fairgrounds . . . forbidden treats. The scene shifts with the cadenza of the final assembly: with the whiff of astringent dill pickles slipped in, surreptitious as a lover creeping into the Sultan's seraglio. And it is done. Contemplate the warm ensemble, plump and pliant as an odalisque, steaming with just a hint of the moist fragrance of a Turkish hammam. Above that addictive, sweaty, adult, meaty smokiness, the rank rapaciousness of roasted onion, and the wicked acidic spiciness, can you detect yet a further subversive Mediterranean influence? It's the quasi-erotic reek of toasted sesame . . . Open wide . . . and bite your burger.
Anne Du Croz
First, an amuse of lapwing feathers, deep-fried with cumin and axiang, danced teasingly across my tongue like a lover's fingertips. Arousal was but moments away. Next came an eagle's egg, plucked from the highest eyrie on Mount Athos by Patriarch Zophir himself. Truly, this egg was forged as heaven itself was born, the shell as gossamer from dawn's light breeze, the yolk rich with fire and fury. The gastro
tour de force, however, was thigh of leopard
long-steeped in myrtle and jungle juniper. Tasting of the swaying velvet grasses of the veld, it gave off the pungent aroma of a fresh-blood kill. Afterwards, the dessert trolley approached like the Angel of the Apocalypse, aromas by Chanel, colour and form a joyful union of Leonardo and
Picasso. My peach-jellied wasabi shimmered
like the twilight mist rising over the Western Isles after a gentle summer's day, with the flavours erupting in a simulacrum of the glorious awakening of Krakatoa. I sank to my knees in thanksgiving.
Max Peterson
No 3923 Set by D A Prince
A recent poll shows that we prefer happy endings - perhaps Anna Karenina should never have gone under the train, and Othello's worries should have been laughed off. We want rewrites to make tragedies more popular to modern readers.
Max 175 words by 30 March. E-mail: comp@newstatesman.co.uk
