‘Lick the Plate’ Moments

Accidentally Cultured is a notoriously bad cook!  His cooking specialty is the ‘removal of flavour’.  But when it comes to eating, he is an expert!

I should have taken note of early courting day warnings.  This was the ‘hippy’ era and he sported a goatee beard accompanied by long hair and headband.  One particular day, working in room 308 in the Chemistry School at University of Sydney, he smelt particularly shocking.  At first I suspected the Organic Chemistry experiments on the fifth floor, but towards the end of the day I realised the smell was coming from the goatee.

‘Oh!’, he said, ‘I licked my ice cream plate last night!’

I had visions of the whole twelve of them sitting around the dinner table licking ice creams plates.  Worse still they obviously all went to bed and out the next morning without a wash.

Over the years I have had many opportunities to witness that to ‘lick the plate’ is the highest compliment AC can give to food.

Travelling, as we did, to many international countries last year, our dining experiences were so varied that we developed our own food rating system.  This varies from the highest rating of 10/10 only achievable if AC threatens to ‘lick the plate’ to the lowest rating of 1/10, also known a ‘a night on the toilet’.

Not surprisingly, ‘lick the plate’ is usually achieved by desserts.  This award went to the ‘Bianco43 Italian Piazzeria restaurant attached to the Grand Hotel, Trafalgar Square, London.  He ate his chocolate profiterole so quickly with plate licked I did not even manage to capture a photograph.