One Saturday evening last fall, Patrick and I couldn't decide what to eat. So what did we do? We decided to Saskaspoon!
So we shook the ipod, and voila...we got Truffles!
Patrick had never been to Truffles before. I had, a couple of times. Twice for lunch with some friends, and once my friend Lise took me out for supper as a special treat. It's a nice place, but pretty pricey, pretty elitish. You kind of have to be in the right mindset if you're going there for a Saturday evening meal. Tim Horton's on a Saturday night this was not!
Truffles is one of Saskatoon's two "French Bistros". It is a rather fancy place, in that they serve local foods, have an extensive wine list, and a food menu that changes regularly. They have cloth napkins, real flowers, and you can be pretty sure that your fork won't have food stuck in the tines.
The other thing I was sure Truffles would have? A pretty packed house on a Saturday night at 8pm. We knew we had the Saskaspooning rule that you had to go to a place if it was open, but what if it was open and you couldn't get in? All we could do was try. I picked up the phone and called.
"Hi. So I know it's kind of last minute," I said, "but how likely is it that we can get in for supper tonight?"
"Tonight?" asked the Truffles Hostess (see? that's class. it wasn't just a harried waitress or sullen adolescent answering -- this was a girl whose sole job was to play Gatekeeper). "Tonight's full up. Unless you can get here in the next 15 minutes."
I looked at Patrick, in his jeans, sneakers, and black tshirt, and down at my own jeans and grey sweater. No makeup, hair barely brushed. 15 minutes? "We'll be there!" I told her.
"We've got to go now," I told Patrick. I grabbed my skull-and-crossbones purse and off we went to spend way more money than either one of us intended.
We were making good time, and I was looking forward to our meal. But then...we couldn't find any where to park. It had been 15 minutes and we were going around and around the block, frantically looking. "We'll miss our reservation!" We were anxious, but I actually think we were more concerned about what that would mean about our Saskaspooning adventure -- would we get to reshake? Of would we have to wait until tomorrow and we could get in to Truffles for lunch before we could eat again? It was all so unknown.
But then we found a spot! And towards the restaurant we hurried. "Hi! I'm Jenny. I'm here for my reservation," I told the Hostess, and as she led us towards the table we looked around the lovely, elegant restaurant, where expensively dressed couples and local business people out entertaining visiting business people sat at the cozy, white-table-clothed tables and ate tiny, fancy foods.
"Did you park in the back?" She asked us, showing us a table, and taking our coats!
"Park in the back? No...." Patrick shook his head, and she explained that they have a private parking lot for their customers. Amazing! (This rarely happens in our town, so please forgive my enthusiasm).
"We're a bit under-dressed," Patrick made a bit of a face and we both looked discreetly at the young couple at the table next to us -- it appeared they were celebrating an anniversary or something. Both were dressed in expensive black items, and she had a big black flower on her head. They were young and she had a lot of diamonds. "First anniversary?" Patrick wondered. "Perhaps he has just proposed," I mused, and then we began a fun game -- figuring out what special occasion had brought our fellow diners out for supper. Because we were pretty sure that they all had legitimate reasons for being there, unlike us (unless you count shaking your Ipod a legitimate reason). Our favourite couple? They came in about half-way through our meal and sat at a table behind us. They were about 45, both were quite tall, and both were wearing complete sets of motorcycle leathers. Suddenly our jeans and tshirts no longer seemed so casual.
We decide to have fun with our experience. We ordered pre-meal cocktails, and we knew immediately that we had the world's nicest waiter: I liked the sound of "Planter's Punch" but told my waiter that it sounded too much like "Planters Warts." So he said, "Why don't you pretend you're ordering a Sea Breeze, but I'll make it taste like the Cocktail Which Shan't be Named?"
They brought us a pre-meal snack (another sign you're eating in a Fancy Place) of crunchy breads and garlicky olive tapenade. It was great.
The drinks came and we got sillier. We started to pretend it was our first date, because this seemed like the kind of restaurant you might take a person you'd liked forever, and had finally gotten up the nerve to ask out, and you were now trying to impress. Or perhaps if you'd been sleeping together for months and finally realized you wanted to legitimize it because you had been slowly falling in love. And falling in love as a result of a sordid tryst deserved a super-fancy first date to whitewash the past.
(NB: We didn't specify what kind of first date we were on. This wasn't any sort of role play, people. This was just a good time).
We both ordered a salad to start, and, in truly Fancy Style, our $11 salads were very, very small. Very, very delicious, but also tiny. Our meals arrived next: Patrick had duck and I ate the steak and potatoes. It was delicious, but we had eaten so much of the crusty bread and tapenade that we were too full to order desert. We went over the list of deserts, picked which ones we would eat if we had any room left in our digestive tracts, and promised to come back for desert another day (perhaps on a pretend second date!)
One of the nicest things about Truffles is that most of the ingredients used were local, which was comforting in that we were doing our part to help out the Saskatchewan economy (and when we got the bill, it was evident that we'd helped out the local economy quite a lot....)
Final verdict? Truffles is highly recommended! Even if you're wearing jeans. Or leather pants!
PS Not only were we pretending this was our first date, we decided that we would actually make this count as our 3rd anniversary date (which was about a week away). So take your pick--was this a first date meal or a 3rd anniversary meal? Does it matter when you're tipsy and eating well and enjoying your friend?
