How good it is to sink a business indeed! (Or at least attempt to.)
My mission, which I decided to accept, was to infiltrate the eating quarters of the Evil Empire in Radisson and report my findings to CNI (Cree Nation Intelligence). Just what was the Empire putting in the digestive systems of its minions? Here was a business no one would object to sinking.
Armed with my state-of-the-art camera and rarely used notebook, I went on the tour of the dam site with my colleagues snapping photos and looking forward to finally sampling the enemy’s cuisine.
After an exhaustive four-hour tour, we were almost ceremoniously ushered into the cafeteria by our overly patriotic guide Leon (“Leo”). As soon as two of my tour mates laid their eyes on the veritable smorgasbord, they remarked, “This is so decadent!”
Once we recovered from the shock of seeing so much free food, we filled our trays with as much as was possible. Alex, our still growing editor, nearly overfilled his tray with at least four different desserts, shrimp avocado salad, some, in his own words, “weird concoction with meat in it,” and a pseudo-Chinese macaroni dish of some sort. He even lost track of whose dessert was whose.
Will and Alex disagreed on the taste of the shrimp avocado salad. Alex pronounced it “putrid,” and Will liked the avocado part of the salad, but only after he scraped off the “juice.” I had the veau fricassee (whatever that means), garden salad and three different desserts and a cup of coffee. I advised Vickie to load up her tray with different dishes from mine so I could sample as many dishes as possible. Vickie, never one to listen to me, also had the veau fricassee (whatever that means) and the pseudo-Chinese macaroni dish. Nearly everyone in our group agreed that the desserts were the best part of the cafeteria’s many offerings. Their dessert selection is rivalled only by a certain bakery I frequent at the Faubourg in Montreal.
Conversation in the dining room centred around the stimulating topics of a certain race not keeping its end of a certain bargain, alleged printed distortions in The Nation and the ever-popular burping.
What did I think of the food? What do you care? You won’t be able to eat there unless you’re an employee or from some rag demanding free food.
