I was out for lunch with my girlfriend and her family in a quiet Italian restaurant near Covent Garden. We had a variety of different main courses, I had opted for the roast pork. It had been nice, though I maybe shouldn't have eaten all the crackling.
The waitress cleared the table. "How was the pork?" she asked me. "It was great, thanks," I replied and the waitress moved away.
I don't think I am an excessively paranoid person (you might disagree) but that seemed a bit odd to me. There had been five of us at the table and we'd all had a different main course, so why had the waitress only asked me what my food was like.
"Do you think she dropped my food on the floor on the way to the table?" I asked the others, who all seemed to agree that it was a bit odd. Or had there been some kind of Fawlty Towers mishap with some rat poison. What was going on?
I overheard our waitress talking to the other waitress, but the only word that drifted across the restaurant was "pork". Why were they so interested in the pork? What had I eaten?
I wondered if possibly the restaurant, which was somewhat struggling for custom on a Saturday lunchtime, which one would hope would be their busiest time, had resorted to getting cheap meat from somewhere. Perhaps very cheap meat. Perhaps free meat. What if the manager had gone out the night before and killed a tramp and now they'd served him up as if he was pig meat (which is, of course, what we're supposed to taste like)? The pork had been on offer. Maybe I was the first to try it and everyone was anxiously waiting to see if they had got away with their dastardly scheme. This waitress had blurted her question out due to her nervousness. She could just have asked everyone generally, but she had to know about the pork. What had been wrong with the pork?
Well I am still around the day after and no ill effects (as far as I can tell), so the mystery remains.
If I have eaten human meat I have to let you know that it's tender and delicious. Most people have to eat a baboon to get some idea of what it would be like to eat a human, but I have been able to walk in the shoes of a cannibal with no moral responsibility for my actions.
But now I've got a taste for it I am going to need more. I've already got in the fava beans and the nice chianti. Be wary my friends. I have overstepped a line.
Either that or the restaurant is just especially pleased with the way they've done the pork. But what do you think is most likely?
