May I grumble, please? I haven’t grumbled for a while. Everybody okay with it? Great.
The topic is mint sauce. I do like a bit of mint sauce with lamb. You know, mint sauce — made with vinegar and chopped-up . . . mint.
So I’m with a friend at this tony, well-reviewed French restaurant on the upper East Side of Manhattan, being served lamb. I ask for mint sauce. They bring me a sort of luminous green jello substance made, so far as I could judge by taste, from toothpaste. It may actually have been toothpaste.
This was a hundred-dollar meal at a French restaurant! The staff had French accents!! (Yeah, I know –prob. Quebecois farm boys, but still . . .) In New York City!!! Upper East Side!!!!
Two words to the restaurateurs of New York City: mint sauce. If you can’t get fresh mint (which is unlikely: it’s a weed, for crying out loud) or have run out of vinegar, you can buy the stuff in bottles – here, for example. For goodness’ sake – standards!