Hank and I went out for a fancy dinner this weekend to celebrate her birthday. I always feel a bit out of place in a fancy restaurant, so I try to hide my hot-sauce-and-beer tendencies with a coat and tie (pants too!). I'm not fooling anyone.

Naturally, I was the only guy in the joint wearing a tie. Actually, that's not entirely true. The entire wait staff wore ties. Also, a table filled with eighty year-old men were similarly festooned. So, it was the geriatrics, the employees, and me. My style is classic.

The menu was pretty tasty looking. Hank suggested that since we don't make it out for fancy dinners very often, one of us should order the prix fixe menu (five mini courses) and the other one should select some different assortment of items, so that we could maximize the number of dishes that we'd get to taste. That sounded dandy. Hank was interested in the prix fixe offering because it came with a wine pairing. Since all wines taste the same to me (kind of winey) I was fine with that.

(I'm not joking about all wines tasting the same. I mean, I'm pretty sure I could tell the difference between red wine and white wine if I were blindfolded, but that's about it. Years ago I confessed to Hank that I was pretty sure I was missing whatever gene enabled a person to distinguish good wine from swill. She assured me I was incorrect so we staged a wine tasting. I purchased three bottles of merlot: a $2.50 bottle from the grocery store, a decent $10 bottle from our local wine store, and a good $50 bottle.

We invited Liz and Larry over for the tasting, and poured out a glass of each wine. We labeled the bottom of the glasses and then mixed them up. Each one of us tried to guess which one was which.

Liz, Larry, and Hank nailed all three. I had no clue what I was drinking at any time. Well, to be honest, I got a bit of a clue about which one was the cheap one when Hank sniffed the glass, gagged, and then refused to drink it. I was unable to detect the swill-like taste that made her eyes water.

Anyway, the point here is that I am a bonafide wine moron. Makes me a cheap date though.)

I did enjoy hearing the waiter describe the wine pairings to Hank though. He'd come over, describe the wine with adjectives that seemed completely unrelated to consumable substances, and then close by saying something like, "And this wine has a high level of acidity, which is the obvious pairing for your scallop tart." He seemed almost apologetic at the lack of creativity in the wine selection. I gave him a stern look and clucked disapprovingly.

My food was tasty though. Basically, I had chicken, but they called it "hen" and they glazed it, and covered it in oatmeal flakes, and marked it with a B. It tasted like chicken.

The dessert was yummy too. They called it a "classic cocoa custard", but it didn't seem very classic. It was rich, and turd-shaped, and had little crispy cocoa bits in it. It was, however, the tastiest thing I've ever eaten that looked like poo.

None of this was as delicious as the piece of leftover Zachary's pizza that I had for lunch today though.