We saw him again (and again, and again) and he said that he really wanted to plan some sort of dinner for us his "special guests". Now I'm pretty sure he meant "special" in a good way. Not the way that your mom says "you're special" when you've just done something really stupid. Anyway, he insisted on making this occasion a surprise for me and sort of a birthday dinner. In an effort to keep this a surprise, he and Dan had several phone chats and text messages to sort this whole thing out.
Last Sunday was the big day. Roy told us to be downstairs by the bar at 8pm. We had just come back on the ferry from Inhaca so we got showered and watched some soccer before we headed down. We exit the elevator to find Roy in workout gear having just come back from a jog. He clearly was flustered that it was already 8 and had us sit at the bar while he ran to get a shower (funny point: He's in the room next to ours). He had Nelson, the bartender, make us a pina colada and a manhattan. We laughed having no clue what this evening was going to entail.
After drinks, we were ushered out to the pool where they had set up a table with candles. The candles were a nice touch but it was a particularly windy night so they didn't seem to want to stay lit. Roy presented Dan with a rolled up paper that had a nice note about how much they appreciate us as guests and whatnot and explained the evening's menu.
Now, let's backtrack a bit. Roy's previous engagements include the Hyatt in Miami and a Sandals resort in Jamaica, although his wife and kids are still in Portugal. Coming from those hotels, wining and dining patrons is somewhat easy and what he really enjoys doing. This makes his current hotel much more difficult since it is 99% business people and convention attendees. Almost no one is here on vacation with their spouse. So when he saw us (and kept seeing us) it was clear we were an anomaly. Hence why he practically begged to put something together for us. Anyway back to the food....
The first course was spicy shrimp with mango and a delicious sauce of some sort. Quite possibly the best plate we've had here. The main was a juicy, perfectly cooked chicken breast with a vegetable tart-like thing in puff pastry. (I just made a point of saying how well cooked a chicken breast was. I think that pretty well describes the barometer of food we've had for the last three months, although we have had some very nice meals.) Dessert was a custard in a cup that my best description is that it would be listed on a San Francisco dessert menu entitled something like "deconstructed custard tart". The custard was in the glass topped with some fruit and some graham cracker crumble thing. Everything was delicious. We had some wine and the chef, a very nice Swiss gentleman, came out and chatted with us.
Shrimp Appetizer
Empty Dessert Glass
Did you notice there is no picture of the chicken? Yeah. About that.
All in all it was a lovely evening. Good food, good company, and it was free! All because we know a guy... Guess it really is true.
No comments:
Post a Comment