From the pretentious dishes, ‘For Your Particular Consideration’, printed in Ornamental Gothic, Bond chose Native Seafood Cocktail Suprême followed by Disjointed Home Farm Chicken, Sauté au Cresson, which was described in italics as ‘Tender Farm Chicken, Broiled to a Rich Brown, Basted with Creamery Butter and Disjointed for Your Convenience. Price 38/6 or dollars 5.35.’ Felix Leiter went for the Baltic Herring in Sour Cream followed by ‘Chopped Tenderloin of Beef, French Onion Rings (Our Renowned Beef is Chef Selected from the Finest Corn-fed, Mid-Western Cattle, and Aged to Perfection to Assure you of the Very Best). Price 40/3 or dollars 5.65.’
When they both had commented sourly and at length about the inflated bogosity of tourist hotel food and particularly the mendacious misuse of the English language to describe materials which had certainly been in various deep-freezes for at least six months, they settled down on the balcony to discuss Bond’s findings of the morning.
Half an hour and one more double dry Martini later, their luncheon came. The whole thing amounted to about five shillings’ worth of badly cooked rubbish. They ate in a mood of absentminded irritation, saying nothing. Finally Leiter threw down his knife and fork. ‘This is Hamburger and bad Hamburger. The French onion rings were never in France and what’s more,’ he poked at the remains with a fork, ‘they’re not even rings. They’re oval.’ He looked belligerently across at Bond. ‘All right, Hawkshaw. Where do we go from here?’
‘The major decision is to eat out in future. The next is to pay a visit to the
