WINE AND DINE WINE AND DINE WINE A? EATING OUT

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31832, 9 November 1968, Page 12

WINE AND DINE WINE AND DINE WINE A?

EATING OUT

Dining out is a chore, a bore, a celebration, or an exercise in expertise, depending on how you look at it

A good restaurateur is as valuable an acquisition as a good banker. He will cook your food expertly, serve it in pleasant surroundings, suggest dishes, tell you which items are in season and which have come out of the freezer, help you choose a wine and—most important of all—he won’t overcharge you for it all. In short, he is a treasure.

But if the restaurateur is important to the diner, the diner is more important to the restaurateur.

A practised diner will know what he wants, and how—and where—to get it He will study the fruit and produce reports as anxiously as any stockbroker studies the sharemarket. He will know which vegetables are out of season, which vegetables have been imported from the North Island and are feeling their age, which vegetables are locally grown and likely to be fresh.

The diner will also watch the weather, so that he might know whether the fish in his Sole Meuniere is a fresh fish or a frozen fish; and he will know that if he eats an oyster tonight it will be a frozen oyster.

But above all the diner should want to enjoy his food—and if he chooses his restaurant wisely, that is exactly what he will do.