The Long Marche

Thursday August 28

The Classics department kindly bought us tickets to Brock's opening dinner, which was billed as being "marche style." We had no sure idea, but a few grave suspicions, about what this meant, especially given the lack of accent on marché, but we got ourselves dressed up and went anyway.

Suspicions were confirmed when we entered a cavernous room and saw that there was not a single chair within - a dire prospect for anyone with any type of bodily disability. Instead, a few barrels - yes, barrels - were scattered in the center, and around the perimeter were labeled stations where local merchandisers - two wineries, two breweries, three restaurants, a cheesemaker, and a dessert caterer - were handing out tastes of their wares. Given that the beer drinkers were unlikely to drink wine and vice versa, that meant that diners had exactly four choices about what to drink - each vintner had both a white and a red - and only four things to have for "dinner" - a slice of cheese, a tiny slab of chicken en gelée, a dainty tomato stuffed with ricotta and basil, and a rather nice but still eentsy scallop "sandwich" with prosciutto and "comfort cream" brie. As far as we're concerned, this spread would have been verging on adequate as appetizers for maybe twenty, but here it was supposed to be dinner for about a hundred. Can you say "chintzy"? Not to mention the fact that Brock charged $20 a person, though the purveyors probably gave a considerable discount to be there - after all, they were advertising.

Luckily the dessert place had about ten choices of petits-fours style pastries, but we ended up running home for hot buttered english muffins, tall glasses of milk, and peaches to fill ourselves up. And that, my friends, was dinner.