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Wednesday 29th October 2003 - 12:07am

Is Food Poisoning Trendy?

Food poisoning: It’s Nature’s way of saying “No, you are not cool”.

This is what I discovered on the weekend after I realised that my life needed sprucing up. I decided I needed more style, I needed more panache – basically, I wanted to be like one of the cool kids on Secret Life of Us. I wanted beaded curtains, candles, bottles of wine – but most importantly, I needed to eat at an uber-trendy boulevard café and eat incredibly pretentious food with words like “bruschetta”, “pesto” and “vinaigrette” in the title.

So off I headed to my nearest ostentatious eatery. Luckily I live close to Paddington, and there are about 20 000 places just like that within walking distance. (Actually, that’s a slight exaggeration…there aren’t 20 000 ostentatious eateries in Paddington – there’s only 10 000. The other 10 000 are ostentatious antiques dealers.)

I knew I’d found the perfect place to be trendy and imperious almost as soon as I’d entered the establishment. Before I even reached the counter to place my order I was greeted by the icy, caustic stare of no less than THREE wait-staff; you know, the kind who know they are far to cool to have to interact with the likes of us common plebes. The kind that miraculously manage to keep an air of superiority about them even when they’re holding an armful of someone else’s dirty plates?

I was even MORE sure I’d found the restaurant with the most pretentious atmosphere when the icy, caustic wait-person who decided to take my order after a mere twenty minutes corrected my pronunciation twice. Apparently it’s eggplant, it’s aubergine, and it’s not ham, it’s prosciutto.

After placing my order, and bruising my tongue in several places trying to order a beverage in Italian (apparently the word “coffee” is sooooo five minutes ago), I was given the once over, deemed far too unattractive for the front of the restaurant and ushered to a small booth somewhere in the back near the rubbish bins. So much for my uber-trendy boulevard café idea. So I waited for a further forty-five minutes and endured several more icy, caustic stares before my food arrived. And when I say arrived, I mean it was practically thrown at me by the super-trendy waiter before practically running back to the kitchen.

As I ate my Mediterranean assembly of hard to pronounce food, I began to think that maybe I really was incredibly uncool – so uncool that it was contagious, which explained why no one wanted to come near me. Maybe beaded curtains, candles and bottles of wine aren’t enough. Maybe I could never achieve a Secret Life of Us style of living – maybe I would just have to learn to accept my low-brow Home & Away lifestyle.

However, as soon as I got to the front counter to pay the bill, everything changed. The icy, caustic stares were gone, replaced with warm smiles and twinkling eyes. I couldn’t imagine what could possibly turn the tables so suddenly – until I was asked to hand over three week’s pay to cover the price of my meal.

But it was worth it! Suddenly I was cool! I could afford to eat at an utterly, utterly pretentious boulevard café! I had candles, and beaded curtains, and wine! I WAS TRENDY!

Three hours later I had my head in the toilet with food poisoning. Like I said – Nature’s way of saying “no, you are not cool.”

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