Listing to Port

1. Diver’s delight. A four-metre deep, one metre-wide cylinder of creamy mousse developed by celebrated chocolatier Frederick Lowly Peach, the diver’s delight serves two purposes. Its first purpose, as food, is relatively straightforward. The second purpose is more unusual. The different levels of the diver’s delight have have different flavours. The upper layers include such flavours as sock, sand and earwax, separated by the occasional fine layer of gravel. Middle layers include garlic, burnt toast and fish. The lower layers are are a more conventional array of fruit and nut flavours and are, by all accounts, delicious. One merely has to get ones head far enough in at first go to get to the tasty part. Therefore it is also a test of the diner’s cream diving skills.

2. The Stanningford fishslap. This little-encountered dessert consists of three hundred marzipan fish with cherry liqueur centres. It is served by a troupe of five waiters in pierrot costumes whose job is to slap the faces or bodies of diners with the fish such that the liqueur squirts into their mouths. The discarded marzipan skins are then dropped through a grille in the floor, where they are consumed by a horde of tame parrots in the room underneath. Eventually, once the diners are drunk enough not to care, they too are deposited amongst the parrots and left to sleep it off.

3. Skronks. Skronks are micro-desserts, usually the size of a peppercorn or smaller, and often containing amazingly realistic tiny versions of larger ingredients. A successful skronk is experienced only as a fleeting moment of sweetness by the diner, despite the hours of work that went into its creation. The skronk diner, out of respect to the skills of the chef, is customarily expected to lie about the deliciousness of the dish and its amazing, mouth-filling flavour.

4. The Southern Ocean. It is a little-known fact that the Southern Ocean has honorary dessert status, following the ceremonial addition of a quart of vanilla essence off the South coast of Tasmania by well-known homeopathic chef Esperanza Buttocks in 2010.

5. Surprise bubbles. These small, flavourless globes are carefully engineered to burst on a choreographed schedule in the diner’s stomach, releasing a series of fascinating-tasting gases for the diner to burp up over the course of the rest of the evening. Some particularly skilled chefs have even extended the surprise bubble experience well into the night, leading to bizarre dreams about passion fruit.

6. Chocolate poetry. Following the innovative development by gastronomic linguist Rowena Q of an entirely chocolate-based language, it is possible to express many types of poetry in chocolate. Concepts are expressed via a series of combinations of dark, milk and white chocolate, with sugar, cocoa butter and cocoa content all acting as important signifiers of meaning. The utmost form of the chocolate poetry art is said to be the chocolate double dactyl, although it is notable that the criteria for rhyme and rhythm are necessarily a little different when sentiments are expressed in chocolate as opposed to spoken language, so the poetic forms often bear only a slight resemblance to their more common namesakes. Rowena Q’s most recent development, a chocolate triolet, was sadly eaten by a beluga whale before being experienced by its intended recipient, the Duke of Rockall.

Before the entrance of the diners, the hall is prepared. The shutters are gilded and bolted shut. Great basins of clover are placed in front of them. A chandelier of beaten gold is raised, and a choir sits in the upper balcony and chants plainsong. A fire is lit in the hearth, over which some unidentifiable large meat object is placed for roasting.

1. Entrance of the diners. Each is served a thimble of champagne and three compliments, which are delivered by lissom young gentlemen in satin jackets. Each diner takes their place at the table and is draped in a large velvet cloak. The cloaks are curiously uncomfortable; they are much too hot for the hall, which is already a little stifling, and they are covered on the inside with large, stiff patches displaying the logos of the banquet sponsors.

2. A great black dish is brought to the table. It is made of cast iron and requires ten servants to carry. These servants are dressed as chimney sweeps and after their brief service they will be thrown out on the street with pay of one Cornish pasty each. The central lights are dimmed, and candles are lit amongst the clover basins. The lid is removed, to great fanfare. Hundreds of bees fly out. The host explains that this course contains no food, but that a delivery of bees is required to pollinate the clover. Water is served.

3. There is a parade of gentlemen in sharp suits through the room. Goodness, but they are well-dressed. A jester, dancing before them, showers the air with cocaine. The gentlemen pass through the room into some other room beyond high table, and we do not see them again. Slices of bread are served, but run out before the bottom of the table is reached. The diners are encouraged to fight for the bread; after ten minutes, those without bread are deemed to obviously not want food, and are thrown out.

4. The choir sings works by John Tavener and Arvo Part. Three banquet supervisors make the rounds of the table, asking for contributions for the choir, who are volunteers. Great flat black pebbles are served, with a single walnut half on top and a drop of salad cream. The supervisors explain that, for a fee, diners may get the pebbles monogrammed in gold and take them home.

5. The fourth course: representatives of major fast-food chains wheel golden trollies around the hall, offering a selection of iconic meals for fifteen pounds each. The choir sing a medley of jingles designed to increase hunger and promote careless purchases. Meanwhile, a group of cheeky young bucks of long and certified pedigree creep beneath the table and anaesthetise the feet of the diners, before stealing their shoes.

6. Diners are given a form to fill in to determine if they are worthy of dessert, citing income, work ethic, and a time they solved a personal challenge in an enterprising way. The five souls deemed worthy get to sit at a small table in the centre of the room and eat flaccid chocolate mousse, with everyone else gathered around to observe their shining example.

7. End of the banquet. A selection of bright, humming and flashing fluorescent tubes are switched on. Two Tudor-esque servants wander in, scratching their arses. They douse the fire, retrieve the roasting meat and take it through to the back room. The cloaks are removed and the guests presented with dry-cleaning bills. On the way out, they are offered employment as servers in the back room for the rest of the evening, but are unable to accept; indeed, most are having trouble even walking (given the foot anaesthetic, their lack of shoes, and the fact that the floor is strewn with dead and dying bees). This is entirely OK, provided that they pay a surcharge.

The next day, the newspapers report positively on the entrepreneurial spirit of the young bucks, recounting as a footnote that some wasters of no consequence were caught stumbling down the road.