That's how you know it's really, really fresh

Chez Panisse is a local food institution in Berkeley to which I paid my first visit this lifetime last night. We went upstairs to the cafe, which is not quite as exclusive as the downstairs restaurant, but is still an extremely, extremely special place.

The special occasion was that I had clients in town for a meeting today who had made plans to go there and those plans then turned out to include me. Who am I to turn down such a generous invitation?

It was a fun, if lengthy, dinner with just a few small mishaps. For one, my salad came with a critter. Yup. It was one of those little black roly poly guys who turn into a ball when you poke them with your fork at a fancy restaurant. And because my instinct to be a good sport sometimes inappropriately trumps my instinct to not eat bugs, I quietly swept him underneath the bread plate and pretended everything was fine. The salad was delicious.

Another funny moment came with dessert. My colleague Amy is getting married in July and, perhaps because the group didn't have much besides work in common, we ended up talking quite a lot about her wedding planning. Our server, managing to be both extremely observant and also not, brought out a special dessert with a little "Congratulations!" card for the lucky couple - Amy and the random client guy sitting next to her.

Priceless.

Debate ensued as to which of them would have the trickier time telling the story to their actual significant other without provoking suspicion that they had done something to cause the confusion.

I was more worried about making sure my rhubarb cobbler was vermin-free.