Lasagna Test

Since the first coffee club meet, I have never missed a single one. Until yesterday that is. There was a gap where I lived in Johannesburg and couldn’t make it - but I had my own little coffee club meets, either at Tasha’s in Atholl Square or the Vida in 24 Central anyway.

The reason why I missed it, was because I just needed a break, a break from everything, including commitments or any form of decision making. I’ve spent the entire weekend being selfish and doing what I want to do. It was great, almost liberating in some ways,;I see now why no one ever commits to anything in Cape Town.

I was supposed to meet up with some people at the Organic Market as well, but that didn’t happen either, because I grew lazy and played with my hackie sack by the pool instead (I’ve learnt I’m still not very coordinated with small flying objects).

I did try to organize a dinner with some friends at Zucca at some point though. Zucca is fast becoming one of my favourite restaurants in Cape Town, besides the great food, ambience and exquisitely decorated venue itself, the hospitality is immaculate and one definitely notices the hand of friendliness owing to the family which runs business. I noticed that most of the patrons in the restaurant were repeat clients and were even on a first name basis with the owners.

I organized a table for 6, but as it happens in Cape Town, no one could commit and the party of 6 quickly dwindled down to a party of moi. Usually, restaurants get quite perturbed when something like that happens but the folks at Zucca went out of their way to find me a quiet little table to myself.

When I’m at an Italian restaurant, I have what I call the Lasagna Test. Considering all things equal, I’ll order the Lasagna and test it to see if it is up to scratch in comparison to other Italian Restaurants that I’ve been too. That’s how I compare Italian Restaurants.

Already having the Pizza and being quite impressed, the Lasagna Test was just a mere formality to see if I would recommend and continue my patronage. Needless to say Zucca passed with flying colours. One could tell that the pasta sheets were freshly made and the combination of Bechamel and meat sauce was perfectly combined to produce a near faultless Lasagna.

I’m lying sick in bed again. Which is my own fault actually, I never fully recovered from the flu last week and in particular have been feeling rather ill the last couple of days, but have pushed on in any case – I certainly should not have done that run on the beach earlier in the week, in this condition, as I felt my chest tightening up and I am sure that it has some how contributed to the way I’m feeling now.

As I mentioned previously, I haven’t taken off work in close to a couple years and I wasn’t going to let something like a little flu stop me from enjoying my break either.