T-Bone and I got to Bymark early last night so we went to the bar and had a drink before dinner. I got an early start on the scotch (Macallan 12) and she on the white wine.
 
An hour later we slid downstairs to our table and our guests – my wife, and T-Bone’s friend whom I’ll call the Other Jen (OJ for short) – joined us. We made our choices and got to it.
 
The appetizers: T-Bone got the steak tartare, my wife got the white asparagus & shrimp with hollandiase, OJ got something else that I can’t remember and I got the steak tartare also. Big mistake. I’d always wanted to try it, and at least now I know, but I can’t say I enjoyed it. Should’ve gotten the gazpacho. Ah well.
 
I felt redeemed during the main course. While the wife got an enormous hunk of salmon and OJ got the chicken, T-Bone and I both upgraded to the famous Bymark burger (which normally runs ~$35). Ordinarily I’d say that’s an insane price to pay for a hamburger, but one bite into it and I knew it was worth every penny. The burger tasted so good that it didn’t even really taste like a hamburger; it was like an immaculate steak with a perfect sauce which just happened to have subtle cheese, unobtrusive lettuce and a few pieces of bread slapped around it. I took my mushrooms off and doubled-up T-Bone’s burger.
 
As if that weren’t enough, the onion rings that came with it were nothing short of miraculous. So light and fluffy and golden and filled with rosemary that – true to form – they tasted less like onion rings than like some foreign food I’d never tasted before. It would be satisfying to walk into Bymark and order a plate of the onion rings.
 
I cleared my palate with Cragganmore. Others used wine, silly tossers.
 
The upside down pear cake was good, but not on the same level as the burger. Not much could be; I’m certain that the burgers were prepared in the Matrix. Believe it or not, I’m now considering making another trip to Bymark solely for the $35 burger and onion rings. I have truly crossed over to some parallel dimension.
 
I’m sad that Summerlicious is over, as are my credit card companies. I wanted to end it off my going to the Metric show at the Mod Club last night (Duarte kindly got me on the guest list), but a splitting headache hit me around the dessert course and got worse from there, so I passed.
 
No rest for the wicked, however; we leave early tomorrow morning to go camping in Algonquin. With any luck our campsite is notunderwater, as most of Peterborough appears to be. Wish us luck.