Strawberry Fare(well) - part 1

I went to Strawberry Fare last night! :D

OK, so I guess I should explain why that is such a big deal for me. It started a long time ago, back in high school...

*cue flashback sequence harp tune*

Back then, I had a friend (still have, although I don't see her much nowadays since she moved city, although I'll be attending her wedding come April!) who often went to Strawberry Fare. Now, her family didn't go there so often as to think that Strawberry Fare was all they ate every Saturday evening, but enough times to make you think that it was one of their favourite places.

Strawberry Fare is a dessert restaurant, specializing in gigantic meal-sized desserts - yes, you can swap-out your dinner for one of their desserts and feel full. Every time my friend would come back from this place she'd regale us with tales of how decadent the dessert was, or how sweet the cakes were, etc etc ad infinitum. The stories fed-upon my curiosity and my sweet tooth, building atop each other from high school through university, and eventually my mind painted a picture of a place bathed in glowing reviews and surrounded by an aura of good times to be had.

The details of the stories faded once my friend moved away, but the feeling they left inside me stayed for a long time, and were still with me when I would finally eat at Strawberry Fare in late 2008.

(Note: I have mentioned the Strawberry Fare story before in my post: Too. Much. Food. as part of Blog Every Day April 2009. If you've already read that one, then think of the following paragraphs as filling-in the gaps of that story)

I was with a bunch of people who I knew mostly through work. We had eaten dinner at a nearby restaurant already, and were actually pretty full (we ordered and shared food expecting 1 extra person who didn't turn up until near the end). That late guy though, having not eaten as much as us, said he'd stick around for dessert. Somebody came-up with the idea of going to Strawberry Fare for dessert, and all of my senses heightened (imagine a dog's ears going up in alert) and focussed on that suggestion.

"Yes!" I said, not heeding the fullness of my stomach. It's only dessert, I thought, it can't be that much, despite what everyone else has been telling me for last almost-decade.

So the group all headed for Strawberry Fare, anticipation building inside me like a child on the eve of Christmas.

The desserts all looked pretty expensive, so at first I thought this place was overcharging. I stuck with a pretty safe bet - a cheesecake, elegantly described in a blurb that contained more words than there were actual ingredients in your average cheesecake - and when I made my order the little cynic inside me started disbelieving that a cheesecake could cost so much.

The little cynic quickly shut up when I got served THAT MUCH cheesecake.

I was full, but somehow that didn't matter anymore. I had to go on because a) I was finally at Strawberry Fare and was learning that all the legends were true, and b) I am going to have to pay for this at the till later.

So I ate. I got through half of the cheesecake before my stomach reached capacity and started calling-in favours from the nearby organs to use them to store any excess food.

*return from flashback*

So what was I doing there last night? I was there for a goodbye dinner/dessert for an overseas friend returning to their country of origin (USA); the second overseas friend I've had to say goodbye to within the span of a month...

(to be continued, because I really shouldn't be up this late when tomorrow is Monday and I gotta go to work; Monday is bad enough already without me adding sleep-deprivation to the mix)