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When I was a kid in India, I was addicted to Enid Blyton's very English books in which kids have adventures and eat a lot. In particular, I longed to have high tea-- something which, for all our culinary wealth, is not readily available in Los Angeles. But one of my very favorite restaurants stepped into the breach, and today Mel and I went to Clementine for high tea.
I had a pot of peppermint tea and she had a pot of camomile, and then came the food: a trio of teeny "lovely tea sandwiches" with the crusts cut off, of which the mutual favorite was the gravlax with dill creme fraiche-- very delicate. Also egg salad with watercress, which is my usual sandwich but next time I go there I'm getting the gravlax, and chicken salad with apples and grapes on pecan raisin bread. Next were warm currant scone with lemon curd and clotted cream. I had never had clotted cream before, and pictured it as a sort of unappetizing lumpy curdled milk. Turns out it's actually similar to whipped cream, but heavier; almost the texture of frosting when you spread it on cake. Incredibly good! Then "assorted dainty sweets"-- a crumbly nut-covered raspberry thumbprint cookie, a light-as-paper chocolate meringue sandwich cookie, an apricot petit four with a teeny C in yellow and teenier leaf frosted on to it, and a cinnamon sugar twist thing with a German name that was the best of all.
The waitress accidentally brought us the dainty sweet platter twice. I wasn't going to say anything, but Mel did, but the waitress let us keep it anyway. So we got our money's worth and more. At the end we got teeny chocolate truffles which caused us both to jerk our heads back and inhale when we put them in our mouths. The blast of concentrated chocolate was like throwing back a shot of Scotch.
Last year I won a raffle to get a free grilled cheese sandwich every day I showed up for Grilled Cheese Month, when they do a different type of grilled cheese sandwich every day. In April. Dammit. I'm switching it over to Mel for the first three weeks, to her vocal glee.
Mel's baby stayed home with Daddy, but Mel reports that she now weighs ten pounds (six at birth) and looks like Winston Churchill.
http://clementineonline.com/
I had a pot of peppermint tea and she had a pot of camomile, and then came the food: a trio of teeny "lovely tea sandwiches" with the crusts cut off, of which the mutual favorite was the gravlax with dill creme fraiche-- very delicate. Also egg salad with watercress, which is my usual sandwich but next time I go there I'm getting the gravlax, and chicken salad with apples and grapes on pecan raisin bread. Next were warm currant scone with lemon curd and clotted cream. I had never had clotted cream before, and pictured it as a sort of unappetizing lumpy curdled milk. Turns out it's actually similar to whipped cream, but heavier; almost the texture of frosting when you spread it on cake. Incredibly good! Then "assorted dainty sweets"-- a crumbly nut-covered raspberry thumbprint cookie, a light-as-paper chocolate meringue sandwich cookie, an apricot petit four with a teeny C in yellow and teenier leaf frosted on to it, and a cinnamon sugar twist thing with a German name that was the best of all.
The waitress accidentally brought us the dainty sweet platter twice. I wasn't going to say anything, but Mel did, but the waitress let us keep it anyway. So we got our money's worth and more. At the end we got teeny chocolate truffles which caused us both to jerk our heads back and inhale when we put them in our mouths. The blast of concentrated chocolate was like throwing back a shot of Scotch.
Last year I won a raffle to get a free grilled cheese sandwich every day I showed up for Grilled Cheese Month, when they do a different type of grilled cheese sandwich every day. In April. Dammit. I'm switching it over to Mel for the first three weeks, to her vocal glee.
Mel's baby stayed home with Daddy, but Mel reports that she now weighs ten pounds (six at birth) and looks like Winston Churchill.
http://clementineonline.com/