| Current Culinary Concoction | Reaction of the Diners |
|---|
| 1 - Sharply Flavoured Pickle, As Yet Unpoisoned | The diners eat in silence, teeth crunching, eyes streaming with tears. They require three times the usual quantity of water and wine to wash it away with. No one complains, but the pleasures of the meal leave them looking rather sapped. |
| 7 - Envenomed Pickles Suspended in Venison Aspic, Dosed with Mr Spices' Private Drug | They carefully slip their spoons into the bones, digging out quivering lumps of translucent aspic. Lips smack. Conversation slows. Someone is gently snoring, still holding a glass of lager. |
| 25 - A Tower of Fungal Pâté Flambé | The lights in the dining room are dimmed for effect; some clap merrily as the flames rise from the mountain of pâté. When they abate, the entire thing is coated in a burnished glaze of reduced absinthe; dreamy smiles follow. |
| 103 - Sparkling Solacefruit Royale | They watch you approach with the bubbling glasses; their eyes are wide, like very ill patients watching the nurse draw near with their dose.
Some of them do try to savour the drink, but every one of them looks sad when the glass is empty. |
| 105 - Solacefruit Champagne Sorbet | The diners eat, and wonder, and lick their spoons. Their eyes are full of dreams, the consolation of the other-world that might have been, where they achieved all their aims, and none of their counsels went wrong. |
| 300 - Curatorial Cocktail | They stare into the coupe glasses full of dark liquid, watching it sparkle. They sip, and smile. Conversation brightens in the dining room. They are altogether more self-assured, more themselves. Hungrier, but not for food. |
| 400 - Parabolan Taper-nut Cake | The diners eat eagerly. There's a murmur of surprise and recognition. "Isn't there a tea room that serves these?" "No; but there ought to be?" They try to order seconds, but you explain that the trick cannot be repeated on the same evening. |
