Idit held her cards close to her chest.
As the night of her B dinner approached, she subtly let on that between being very busy with work, and as only Bernhard and I joining herself and Oliver dear for dinner, she probably won’t go very thematic on it.
This one will be low-key.
So with our expectations appropriately deflated, my man and I made our way to Chez Idit, only the anticipation of her virtuoso cooking buoying up our spirits.
But I should have bloomin’ known.
As if Idit could ever resist – or indeed be able to hold back – the opportunity to turn her dining room into a theatre set…
The table could well have been set by the Prince of Darkness himself, with a black tablecloth, black candlestick & candles, and all black plates and napkins.
Fittingly, Black Sabbath was playing on Spotify.
It’s the Black Dinner.
Now, if any of you are thinking that black dishes and black foodstuffs are somehow gross, let me remove this childlike misconception from your minds right away.
Idit opened with black caviar, a black-olive tapenade and black-garlic & rock salt butter, all served with black rye crackers and dark bread.
I can never resist those tiny seawater grenades of caviar, and the garlic butter was Fantastic.
So the Cava wasn’t black… but it did fit this starter perfectly.
After this she served small Chinese aubergine quarters, baked in miso and black garlic (Nasu Denngaku) – salty-sweet and very more-ish.
Then came squid-ink spaghetti with mussels, shrimp, cherry tomatoes, and orange zest, which filled the room with an intoxicating aroma.
(Dorrotya will regret missing this one.)
For desert we had blackberries, purple figs and intense dark chocolate, served alongside black coffee with coffee-infused tapioca pearls.
And as this wasn’t a school night… to digest this abundance we sat to watch… Pitch Black.
