Beef//broccoli

Tonight I had dinner at Saf for a wine-tasting event that is usually only open to club members, but since almost no club members were willing to show up this month (which was either a coincidence or a testament to the state of the raw/vegan restaurateur business here in London at the moment), a whole host of people were invited to bring in an organic wine and enjoy a tailored menu for the evening. I will write more later, but it was interesting to sit at the table - it was perfectly divided down the middle between full vegetarian/vegan-lifestyle embracing devotees who run related businesses on one end and meat-eating financiers at the other. To be clear, I vaguely straddled the middle - a non-vegetarian who lists Saf amongst his favorite London eateries, and an employee of the financial world who has nothing to do with financing businesses such as Saf. I've eaten at Saf now too many times to count (given my not so tenuous connection to my family through Joe) and I have to say that even while it's given me a greater appreciation for raw vegan cuisine, tonight's menu was particularly delicious and the wine pairings gave me at least a reinvigorated interest and slightly broader understanding of vinology (one not felt since my dinner at Alinea over a year ago, though it does not come close to overshadowing my passion for cocktails, scotch, and 焼酎). I was in particular moved by the dumplings, the tacos (a new, welcome addition to the menu), and the risotto (as always). But back to the philisophical and lifestyle divide. Even in the two designations, the variation was huge - the Californians (Joe and I), the American with the annoying British affectation in her speech, the Indian-British (i think?) with the long hair and raw diet, the annoyingly critical British couple with the vegetarian business, the artsy Australian, the shy and awkward British couple who were constantly slightly out of place, the vulgar Italian chef, the Turkish banker and his girlfriend, the three almost silent Turkish financiers. It was truly a strange mix that only really gelled due to the presence of copious amounts of alcohol and general goodwill toward the restaurant experience since one of the Turkish financiers is the president of the company that owns Saf. In the conversation over dinner varied topics arose - the great London snow of 1987 and the even greater storm of that year that leveled many of the trees in London; the sourcing and pairing of many wines and foods; the difficult life of a young Ecuadorian girl searching for a liver transplant; the exploration of the ancient cultures of Europe, Northern Africa, and the Middle East by people from nations of much shallower culture; the consumption of British ales. On the outskirts of these conversations were messages in my blackberry from relatives who are here in London now and friends far and wide who were either just checking in or who have major life announcements to make. The entire situation - eating a cuisine that isn't particularly important to my lifestyle while discussing fairly broad topics with people I don't know with the intermittent major announcement from people who actually matter to me - made for a strange juxtaposition that made my life seem extremely strange when looked at in not particularly studied repose. I am slowly aging but I am seemingly not adjusting anything for the increasingly weighty passage of time from the far distance I watch from. Major events are happening in lives I have cared about, and I am content to sit around a table of strangers in a country thousands of miles away and drink wine and discuss the history of the world in thinly-veiled sophomoric terms. Only time will tell whether choosing to do this at this time is a mistake or harmless, but I worry that even in describing it in those simple terms it seems that there is only downside, that the only outcome is either neutrality or loss. I've said this often recently, but time will tell, and it is a sad truism that by the time I have the answer, it will be too late to do anything with that knowledge.