The Worst Meal I Ever Ate
If you were a guest of Cesare Borgia and started choking halfway through dinner there’d be no point signalling for the Heimlich manoeuvre, because in all likelihood you were choking not because food had become lodged in your trachea, but because one of Cesare’s footmen was in the process of garrotting you. The fact of the matter was that the food at Cesare Borgia’s was fine; it’s just the host was a little disagreeable. The reverse was true of his sister, Lucrezia, who, though a charming hostess, did tend to serve up meals containing far more poison than would be considered acceptable even by the Machiavellian standards of Renaissance Italy. Yet, despite your slim chances of surviving the evening, a dinner invitation from one or other of the Borgia siblings was a much-prized symbol of status in the late 1500s. Amazing what you can get away with when your father is Pope Alexander VI.
Fast-forward 500 years and a few thousand kilometres to find me in Canada. It’s the year 2004 and I’m over there for the Montreal Comedy Festival. They are holding a retrospective of Norman Wisdom films and my enviable task is to interview the man himself for Cahiers du Cinéma. Hand-held Grundig 2070 Dictation Machine in my pocket, I arrive at La Cantarella Cantina, a Tuscan restaurant smack bang in the middle of the Marché Jean-Talon, the huge farmer’s market in the very pulmonary artery of the heart of Montreal’s Italian quarter. Mr Wisdom enjoys Italian cuisine, and my editor arranged this dinner in the half-hope that a bottle or three of chianti would loose Norman’s tongue and we’d get the dirt on that sordid Shepparton Studios sex scandal that rocked the film set of What's Good For The Goose back in ’69. French film magazine readers like that stuff. And it all would have gone according to Cahiers’ sleazy plan had not the owner/manager of La Cantarella Cantina turned out to be one of the Borgias.
Freda Anne Borgia-Johnson, according to the family tree proudly wallpapering the foyer of the restaurant, was none other than the great-great-great-great-great granddaughter of Lucrezia’s (and probably Cesare’s) illegitimate son, Giovanni. Now, I know you can’t choose your relatives and I also know the sins of the forefather shouldn’t be visited on subsequent progeny but, really, if you’re a Borgia and you choose a career in the food industry you are inviting a certain amount of scepticism.
Now, there was no logical reason for me to suspect Ms Borgia-Johnson of wanting to kill Norman Wisdom that night. It was a preposterous notion. Plus, it was a Wednesday and there was every chance she might not even be there. Let’s face it, she might not even really exist. The whole thing was doubtless a mere puff. A fanciful wheeze. Like Dracula’s. One didn’t really expect to walk into the theatre restaurant and find it being run by Vlad the Impaler. I was being patently ridiculous. Sufficiently admonished, I put aside any nagging worries I had and checked my coat, but then quickly gathered them to my bosom again when the maitre d’ (or whatever the Italian equivalent is) pointed out Ms Freda Borgia-Johnson over by the bar offering a bowl of nuts to her waiting customers, one of whom was Norman Wisdom.
She did seem a nice lady. About eighty years of age. A nice, harmless little old lady. Yeah, like Mrs Bates was a nice, harmless little old lady. But no, I was letting my imagination get the better of me. Hadn’t La Canterella Cantina been a much-loved restaurant in Montreal for thirty years? There was nothing to worry about. Still, I declined a nut when she offered it, just in case it had been laced with hemlock.
As it turned out, I needn’t have been concerned about whether her intentions to Norman were murderous. Freda was a massive fan and couldn’t have been more effusive in her delight at having the famous comic star of The Night They Raided Minsky’s (and, to a lesser extent, A Stitch in Time) grace her eating establishment.
However, she didn’t seem all that keen on me.
Perhaps she resented the media intrusion (my Grundig was rather large and obvious). Perhaps she was jealous that I got to spend more time with Norman than she (she kept holding his hand and guffawing). Perhaps she had somehow seen my own film work (although I was very good in SeaChange a few years back). In any event, I was on the receiving end of several withering looks as I tried to wind up her conversation so we could be shown to our table. And later, when I asked that we not be disturbed for the interview, she turned on her heel and left the table in what could only be described as a snit. And the last thing you should get a Borgia in is a snit. I can’t be too sure but as she left I’m almost certain I saw her tip something out of her hollowed-out ring into my squash. This worried me a little.
Norman ordered up big: vole liver crostini, a bowl of piping hot pappa al pomodoro and some iced fettunta, followed by a main course of barbecued rosticciana recumbent on a blanket of deep fried courgettes. I went for something simpler: panzanella, a bowl of ribollita and the trippa alla fiorentina in beetroot. For a skinny dude, Norman could really sock it away. I, on the other hand, was so nervous about the possibility of being either poisoned or garrotted by Freda that I barely ate a thing.
The interview had gone well and as I switched off my Grundig, Norman insisted on ordering dessert: sugared zuccotto and some cantucci dipped in sweet Vin Santo, plus a platter of pecorino cheese smeared with ant honey. Freda took advantage of our post-interview status to reappear and wheeled the trolley out herself. It occurred to me that if she were intent on finishing me off, this might be the perfect opportunity. She offered us both some complimentary Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. Usually it’s port. Suspicious.
She poured Norman’s first and then mine. I might be mistaken but mine appeared to be smoking slightly.
Then I gots me an idea.
I should point out, I suppose, that it wasn’t strictly my idea. I think it was originally in an Abbott and Costello movie – no, not the Susquahanna Hat Company routine, the old switcheroo.
I bade Freda to sit with us and poured her a goblet of vino, then invited Norman to re-enact the golfing routine from The Early Bird (1965). This he did with an élan bordering on the unnecessary and as he yelled ‘Mr Grimsdale!!!’ (Not actually the original scene but Norman was on a roll and adlibbing) Freda threw back her head and laughed a trill girlish cackle. Her attention momentarily diverted, I surreptitiously replaced her glass for mine and then joined in the general merriment. Her eye caught mine at the last micro-second of my manoeuvre and she knew I was onto her. Then something over my shoulder seemed to catch her attention.
‘Oh, look, there’s Celine Dion coming in,’ she observed.
Norman and I turned, only to see a fat man with a red beard drunkenly stagger through the revolving doors and into an ornamental fountain. As we laughed, I heard the unmistakable sound behind me of glass scraping slightly on Formica. My head whipped round in the manner of an amateur ventriloquist dummy, only to see Freda guiltily scratching her nose and whistling.
‘Er…sorry. My mistake. It looked a bit like her from the back,’ said Freda unconvincingly.
I glanced at the glasses. It was impossible to tell whose she had swapped for whose.
‘A toast,’ said Freda. ‘To Norman Wisdom–’
I cut her off. ‘Are you saying that guy’s red beard looks like the back of Celine Dion’s head?’ The sarcasm dripped from every word and formed a pool underneath the sentence.
‘Yeah. She’s been experimenting with a new hairstyle and–’
‘But that’s her over there, isn’t it?’ I interrupted, pointing to the restrooms.
Freda and Norman turned and I quickly switched her glass for mine and, just to be on the safe side, Norman’s for hers. They turned back just as I pulled my hand away and made as if I were shooing a fly.
‘To Norman!’ I announced and was about to raise my glass.
‘You are incredulous at my misidentification of Ms Dion, yet you think that is she?’ asked Freda with unlikely syntax and an eyebrow arched so high it looked like a circumflex. She had her thumb jerked towards the potted plant I had pointed at earlier.
‘I’m sorry,’ I explained, putting down my glass. ‘It’s just, without my spectacles it looked remarkably like Celine–‘
‘But you’re wearing your spectacles,’ butted in Freda.
‘Er…my other spectacles,’ I countered, picking up Norman’s pair from the table and putting them on over my own. ‘Ah yes – now I see. Mmmmm. A Maidenhair fern.’
Norman was beginning to suspect something was up, and it would have got awkward had not the actual Celine Dion hurried into the restaurant at that moment and made past us for the restroom. A big fan of Norman’s, Celine stopped to pay her respects and sat down with us. Norman offered her some of the complimentary wine. She ended up drinking all three glasses and the rest of the bottle. There were no ill effects. And I must say, Celine was delightful company and certainly has a way with a filthy limerick.
So, as it turned out, there was nothing at all wrong with the food at La Canterella Cantina. The wine, too, was absolutely fine. I had been worrying unnecessarily, so much so that the best meal I might ever have had ended up seeming like the worst. And I owe Freda Borgia-Johnson nothing less than my most unqualified, unreserved and abject apology.
Everyone in the restaurant did, however, get ptomaine from the sorbet. Celine threw up on Norman. It was enough to put you off your food.
This piece originally appeared in ‘The Age’ Epicure section.
Shaun Micallef is a Melbourne-based writer, producer, actor and comedian, and the host of ‘Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation’, on Network Ten. His 2004 book, ‘Smithereens’, is well worth tracking down.
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