von: i'm going to craigie street bistro at 9 tonight for a special deal four-course chef's choice menu. coming?
me: okay
von: is there anything you don't eat?
me: sea cucumber and frog legs. and prawns.
von: right. do NOT be late or i'll sell your kidneys.
me: *going back to bed* wake me when it's time to go.

light drizzle when we set out at 8.45. craigie street bistro is only one street up from my apartment, so we arrive far too early and spent that time happily browsing the selection of food writing and bistro guides in the waiting area. finally we are shown to our seats and soon is brought to us our appetiser of mussels, clams, crayfish (that's not prawn, the waitress assures me.) and - get this - very very salty strips of sio bak, exactly like you will get at johnson duck, except bacon red, in unnaturally green parsley sauce.

next, a small slab of sea bass (i thought of darryl) in a kind of creamy tomato sauce with crunchy vegetable bits in. the sea bass was a little too rubbery for my liking, but reasonably nice, and topped with a raffia ball of that straw and black coloured stuff you get on top of mock fish in chinese vegetarian restaurants.

which brings us to the third course, which was a heavenly crispy pork belly, which came sitting in a shallow lake of corn soup and surrounded by tiny mushrooms (no bigger than the tip of enoki mushrooms,) and when bitten into all that delicious fat simply melted away in your mouth. von: who would have thought we came all the way to cambridge to eat kung bak? feeling very smug about being chinese. (which reminds me i had very good kungbak in yiochukang when i was home. and ariel wouldn't put kung bak in his pau like everyone else, he put rice in it.)

our meal was accompanied by a white wine (i don't know what it was, have to ask von) and then von switched to a bottle of samuel smith organic ale which i really liked. then dessert arrived. thus far we have been brought the same thing at each course but now they put in front of me "chocolate square with white chocolate ice-cream and almonds" which would have pleased in other circumstances but they give von grits slathered in raspberry and spices. this is so unfair! i cry. they give me the chocolate dessert because they think i'm a woman and they give you the raspberry which everyone knows i relish! von smirks. want to swop? i ask hopefully.

von: no.
me: what about going halves?
von: no. i despise chocolate.
me: just swop for a little while lah?
von: i said no.
me: well... can i have a bite then? von moves his plate away and doles out exactly one small spoonful to me, no more, and no amount of remonstrating and wounded looks resulted in my making further incursions on his dessert, and he finished it all with smirk and flourish and gloated over me still trudging unwillingly through my chocolate. i wish i had said i was allergic to chocolate, she sighs.

anyway that was the last dinner. von leaves cambridge for good tomorrow to start his google job in california. no more splurging, that was the last time. frugal habits and dining halls, hard work and savings and macdonald's burger flipping. right. needle nardle noo.