Listing to Port

1. A pie approximately the size and shape of a pie shop, having a rather convincing false shopfront and a well-hidden pastry lid; the point of which being to lure in unsuspecting hopeful pie-eaters and trap them inside, so that they can be released on the ceremonial cutting of the pie rather like the four-and-twenty blackbirds in the nursery rhyme.
2. A pie that has no bottom. Not one that has no pastry bottom: there are plenty of those. I mean a pie that literally has no bottom, you break through the top and find yourself looking down into a horrifying abyss.
3. A pie containing a smaller pie containing another smaller pie, for pastry lovers everywhere.
4. A giant space pie constructed by aliens around a star, the intent being to harness the entire energy of that star to gently cook the pastry over some billion years or so; the gastronomical version of the Dyson Sphere. There are in fact three of these currently detectable with current telescope technology, but it will take science a few years to come round to the correct explanation of what we are seeing.
5. The lifesaving pie suits of the Cornish pixie folk, which inflate around their owners in times of trouble to provide a convincing facsimile of a particularly unappetising Cornish Pasty; the intent being that, rather than throwing a wobbly about having discovered a pixie, the offending human will instead consign the suspect pasty to a local bin, from whence the pixie can later crawl under cover of darkness and escape.
6. Nautical pies which can be eaten if necessary but which will also stay afloat for long enough that you can paddle all the way to that distant island with your large spoon, provided you are OK with sitting in gravy.
7. Your pie, made precisely for you in just the way that you like best; there is only one of it so exactly correct, and after you have eaten it you will feel oddly content, but you will never go out seeking pie again and perhaps there will be less of a sparkle in your eye for the rest of your days.

1. The diners are served a banquet of lies; amazing, outrageous and mouthwatering ones. Each lie contains its own recipe. The diners cannot wait to get home so that they can try to make the lies for their family and friends as well. Conveniently, the lies address why everyone is still curiously hungry.
2. The dining room and all the furniture in it are made of pasta, as the diners discover when their chairs collapse. Chorizo trapezes are lowered from the ceiling for them to perch on. Everything else (pasta, coats, bags et cetera) falls through the newly opened floor into a vat of boiling water to be cooked. Nozzles in the walls dispense cooling sprays, sauce and wine for the diners. Those whose credit cards have been boiled are allowed to call on the audacious ghosts of the Futurist movement to avenge their loss.
3. The first course is plants. The second course is a bird that has been fed on those plants. The third course is a beast which has been fed on those birds. The diners are given the option of discreetly leaving before dessert. After a long and occasionally agonizing wait, the candied flesh of the remaining diners is served to the hooded waitresses, who have been tapping their fingers on the table all this while.
4. The supper is a great gathering of mighty worms from space. They intend to eat Brazil (the coast for a starter, moving on slowly to the pampas, with the rainforest to finish). For some reason humanity insists on referring to this as an invasion rather than a light and civilised supper. Nuclear weapons are deployed. The worms realise there are little stinging creatures all over their meal and retreat to Alpha Centuri. The wormish chef is deported to the Large Magellanic Cloud for gastronomical stupidity. In the centuries to come, lovers in low Earth orbit will eat their suppers by the light of the rainforest and call it beautiful.
5. Diners enter a well-decorated library of fairy tales. A roast wolf is served on a great platter. With a theatrical flourish, a woodsman enters to carve the wolf. From the steaming cavern of its belly rises Little Red Riding Hood, rosy with heat and wrapped only in an indigestible space blanket.

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.

1. High Security, 2055. Following the widespread legalisation of most intoxicants in Europe in the 2040s, High Security was a restaurant themed around smuggling drugs through airports. Patrons were thoroughly frisked and had their bags searched on entry, before being seated at a table in a small interrogation room and served one of a number of themed meals. Their pot brownies were particularly notable. High Security lasted all of three months before an incident in which a patron unfortunately assumed the small sachets of white powder on the table were salt, after which it was closed down. 

2. Wet Dog, 2077. Wet Dog was a place for connoisseurs of what the founders believed was the most underestimated smell/taste combination: wet dog. Serving a select range of whiskies, wines and cheeses, Wet Dog also featured a real-life dog smelling menu, where patrons could compare and contrast the gentle fug of a damp spaniel with the full-on stink of a sopping saint bernard. Wet Dog managed two years of operation before its supply of contrarian diners dried up. It was able to maintain its large dog collection by rebranding as a dog cafe, however.

3. Shark, 2028. Shark was a cross between a takeaway and restaurant service for people without enough free time to go out for food. Patrons would place an order on Shark’s website during the day; in the evening, a waiter would turn up in a van with a large box containing a table, chairs, and a number of large screens linked in to other shark patrons to give the impression of one very large restaurant. The waiter would serve the requested meal, and the patrons were free to nip out in the middle to perform important teleconferences or wipe the toddler. Shark was a victim of its own success, with demand growing faster than its its suppliers’ ability to provide its unique screen technology. The virtual restaurant went on hiatus in 2029 and became caught up in the great crash of 2030, finally declaring bankruptcy in 2032.

4. Banana, 2025. The place to go for lovers of curved fruit, Banana specialised in introducing interesting and unusual banana and plantain cultivars to the UK and serving them up with a nearly unbearable amount of single and double entendre. Patrons could also mark their preferred state of greenness and squishiness of the classic Cavendish banana on a large chart on the wall, and admire the unusual decor (bright yellow with a selection of cock jokes in expensive fonts). Banana was shut down in 2031 following a spate of incidents in which its distinctive takeaway containers were used to hide automatic weapons.

gnimmelshouseofmaps:

The First Feast
The feast is held in a nautically-themed basement, somewhere in a distant and unedifying part of town. A reproduction of the last feast on the Titanic is served by a host of waiters in Pierre et Gilles sailor-boy costumes. As soon as the doors are closed, the noise of a tremendous rainstorm can be heard. A drip develops in the centre of the table. The first few courses are accompanied by the sounds of water trickling under the door.
By the third course, the floor is covered with a thin skim of water. The guests splash their way to the toilet, then back to their seats. The outside door is locked. By the fifth course, the waiters are wading through a foot of water, their sailor costumes damp and see-through. For the eighth course, the table is winched clear of the rising waters. The guests stand to eat their asparagus vinaigrette. By the tenth course, the guests must swim to recieve their peach and chartreuse jelly, delivered through a hatch in the ceiling.
The jelly is spiked with a powerful sleeping draught. The guests awake the next morning, alone, on a bare raft somewhere in the North Sea.

The Second Feast
The invitation states, wear masks. To avoid confusion, you are informed beforehand in a splendidly-typeset letter as to who of the others will be wearing which mask. The room has black, glassy-smooth reflective walls. Once the meal is served, it becomes apparent that nothing is what you expected it to be. The water is vodka. Eggs are served which have the white centrally, surrounded by a layer of yolk. A cake is brought in that is made entirely from meat; a game course sewed inside the skin of chicken legs; chocolates that are made from cheese. The final course is the facsimile of a full roast dinner in cake, marzipan and fondant.

At the end of the meal, the masks are removed. No-one is who you were told they were.

When you get home, the door of your house will be curiously ajar and small items will have been moved from their usual places.

The Third Feast
The third feast is held in a library. You are familiar with this library, but you were never aware of the room the feast is held in. It is behind a curiously nondescript door, which seems as though it might lead to a broom cupboard but in fact leads to a high-ceilinged gallery filled with all manner of obscure volumes. The head librarian meets you there, carrying a tray of magnetic letters. The letter you choose determines the meal that is served to you.
One might choose P and be led to a purple parlour, where peacock pate, partridge with pickled pear and pomegranates would be served; or A, and be led to an alcove in which waiters dressed as angels would offer asparagus, artichokes, andouillettes and amaretto. Those who choose X are strapped to a cruciform frame and spoon-fed a limp cross of xanthan gum. The unlucky few who choose Z are fed zebra steaks laced with opium, and sleep for the majority of the meal. 
The next morning, the guests find a letter tattooed, discreetly, in the crook of their arm; but it is not always the letter they chose.

The Fourth Feast
The fourth feast is held in the room at the top of a tower, in a circular room with chequerboard windows of red and white stained glass. When the guests have taken their places at the round table, the ladder is drawn away and they are shut in.
After some time waiting, it becomes apparent that the cutlery is only a crude facsimile, and is in fact silver-painted biscuit and quite edible. The table decorations are inflatable and pressurised by soup. Shortly after this, the guests realise that the plates are fake, too; they form the second course. A valve is found whereby the windows can be drained of their central layers of red and white wine to reveal clear glass and the surrounding forest. A layer peels off the table to reveal the third course, and by deconstructing their chairs they are able to extract the fourth, which is hidden in the legs like marrow in bones.
By now it is well past midnight, and still no-one comes. Inspecting the walls, the guests find that some bricks can be removed. These bricks are chocolate-framed replicas, containing splendid puddings. The holes left by their absence form a ladder, by which they can descend the tower and go home.

The Fifth Feast
The first course is a food course. The second course is a sex course. They alternate in quick succession, until no-one can quite remember what they are supposed to be doing with their hands and mouths.

The Sixth Feast
The sixth feast is a replica of the funeral feast of King Midas. It is held in a remote country house, lit by dim lamps and perfumed with incense; a greek orthodox choir can be heard at times throughout the proceedings, although they are never seen. The black-clad waiters are hired magicians, sleight-of-hand artists and illusionists. Throughout the meal, they stealthily replace the items in the hall by exact replicas in pure gold, beginning subtly (table decorations, door handles, strolling peacocks) and ending with the cutlery as the guests are using it to eat dessert. As a finale, the waiters line up to pull the tablecloth out from under its contents. The guests laugh drunkenly over their honey wine, expecting a golden table; but instead the house disappears, and they are left, bereft of riches, on a low hill in the dim light of early sunrise.

The Seventh Feast
Jaded and tired, the guests meet on a ship in international waters. After making certain preparations, they secretly draw straws and then retire to their cabins. Later that evening, avatars of each guest meet at a virtual-reality table, where they share their thoughts on the splendid meal that is being served to each, individually, in separate parts of the ship. The guests know that one of their number is not real, but is instead an AI which has been supplied with certain knowledge about that person. The missing person forms the prime ingredient in the banquet they are eating.

Nostalgic for their first feast, they later sink the boat.

On the road at the moment, so here is an old list-like thing from t'other blog.

0092 Geometry of food
  -0092.1 Simple blob forms
    –0092.11 Spherical
      —0092.111 Meatballs
      —0092.111 Berries
        —-0092.1131 Edible
        —-0092.1131 Used to poison the diner
      —0092.113 Assorted spherical items of gastrowankery
        —-0092.1131 Pearls
        —-0092.1131 Ravioles
        —-0092.1131 Spherical plates which have to be broken to access the food
        —-0092.1131 Room-size sugar spheres in which the diner is imprisoned
    –0092.42 One long dimension, two short
      —0092.421 Sausages
      —0092.422 Eggs
      —0092.423 Chips
      —0092.424 Beans
    –0092.43 Two long dimensions, one short
      —0092.431 Burgers
    –0092.44 Other
      —0092.441 Deliberately contrary meat products
  -0092.2 Triangular forms
    –0092.21 Sandwiches
    –0092.22 Triangular eggs
    –0092.23 Other food shaped into triangles, for the dedicated and persistent eater of triangles
  -0092.3 Square, rectangular and cuboid forms
    –0092.31 Sandwiches (unsliced)
    –0092.32 Custard creams and similar biscuits
    –0092.33 Melons that have been grown in glass cubes
    –0092.33 Fudge, gajar halwa, flapjack and other sliced things
  -0092.4 Food of irregular shape
    –0092.41 Steak
    –0092.42 Broccoli
    –0092.42 Other
  -0092.5 Food of uncertain or amorphous shape
    –0092.51 Jelly
    –0092.52 Mists and foams
       —0092.521 Indistinguishable from actual weather
  -0092.6 Complex or architectural shapes
    –0092.61 Food sculptures
       —0092.611 Little people made of butter
       —0092.612 Little people made of sugar
          —0092.6121 Perched awkwardly on top of cakes
    –0092.62 3D printed forms
    –0092.63 Edible chairs
    –0092.63 Edible hats

1. The Flesh Pot, 2080. Taking advantage of the widespread uptake of vat meat, the Flesh Pot specialised in providing diners with very small, very expensive steaks made from the genetic material of the celebrity of their choice. The Flesh Pot was very careful to be scrupulously above board. All celebrities on the menu endorsed the restaurant and had personally donated their DNA to the on-site vat farm in South London. As a result, their selection was a little peculiar and tended towards the C-list. However, there was always rumoured to be a basement to the building, accessible via a fold-out mirror in the building’s excessively plush toilets, where somewhat less ethical meals were served: for example, the flesh of non-affiliated personalities (bin raids for genetic seeding material being a well-publicised hazard of fame in the near future) as well as experimental organ and other scaffold-based meats. An article in the New Sun in 2082 claimed that an infiltrating reporter had been served a faithful replica of a horse’s penis made from the genetic material of a well-known singer, and that the offered menu included the option to consume the hearts of one’s enemies, given a few strands of hair and a couple of months’ lead time. As a result, the Flesh Pot was shut down in 2085, though many years later its core concept spawned a chain of neo-Venusian fast food restaurants.

2. Light.1, 2088. Light.1 did not serve food; rather, patrons ‘dined’ on light, air, smells and sounds harvested from across the world. From 2091 water was also occasionally served with meals, although many purists felt that this was going against the original concept. Light.1 was initially branded as an art concept restaurant. However, it soon found its three windowless dining rooms were frequently underoccupied. By 2095 the restaurant, which was kept in operation by the ready flow of some billionaire’s art-wank money, had primarily rebranded itself as a weight loss enterprise. Although the main restaurant closed in 2100, the concept was kept alive by a travelling Light.1 roadshow offering non-dining experiences in some of the world’s deeper caves.

3. The Cauldron, 2109. The main dining room of the cauldron was built around an enormous pot, set bubbling in 2109 and kept boiling for the entire lifetime of the restaurant. Two rows of seats (the restaurant’s entire capacity) surrounded the pot. After initially being seeded with an unknown set of ingredients, the pot was entirely stocked with ingredients provided by the restaurant’s patrons, who were allowed to taste a spoonful of the current stew when making their (exclusive, in-person only) booking. The restaurant had no chef and only a skeleton staff. Its stews were frequently peculiar-tasting, but oddly popular; perhaps because patrons felt they were contributing something to some kind of notable crowdsourcing event thing. The existence of the Cauldron was probably prompted by the 2100’s fashion for boiling all foodstuffs to unrecognisability, following the unfortunate advent of Salmonella X in 2102.