Feeling Feta About It

What follows is a tale of greed, lust, violence and of course, cheese.

It started innocently enough – three female friends having a quiet Thursday night dinner at our “local” restaurant Opal by Gordon Ramsay at St Regis Dohaafter a complex week in the vineyards of truth.

I spend a lot of time at Opal, because it has simple and fabulous food, great staff and an outdoor terrace. It’s the closest place I have to a neighborhood brasserie. I know I can go there, have a terrific meal, a glass of wine and usually little drama. they also have a hard core commitment to cheese in all its form. It’s a match made in heaven.

This may explain the events relating to this post.

Speaking of drama, our evening quickly descended into something quite different.

Reservoir Dogs Meets the Muppets would be apt.

The culprit was this:

Yes, a simple pizza. With a spicy sauce, minted yoghurt and basically feta. But it was alchemy. We could have been drunk and high on the fact it was the end of the week, but it set us off on a trajectory.

It was so good, I bailed up the chef, Elias, who tried to explain the method of the spicy sauce. Something about a chinois and roasting. Couldn’t listen, although I was momentarily transfixed by how he said the word “chinois”.

It was all lost. I was eating and fending off my fellow diners, intent on snaring extra pieces, with sharp cutlery. It was the first time dinner involved a knife fight. The wait staff were just running crowd control, keeping us watered and physically contained.

Chef gave up his explanation, left shaking his head and sent out another of the same.

Resistance was futile. The hysteria from our table on the terrace was reaching alarming levels.

There was other food, all of it excellent including this unctuous wild mushroom risotto which did briefly calm us down.

I know you would like to me delve deeper into the events of this particular evening.

I refer you to the security footage and the police report. And my lawyer.