Truth be told, I love fish, not to mention calamari. But I've always felt good prawns and crayfish are vaguely wasted on me and I'm yet to develop a taste for mussels or oysters.
And so there I was, 15 minutes late, at an angry Italian man's fancy seafood restaurant.
The waitress informed me — despite my protests that I'd be very happy with the seafood — that they'd replaced one of my dishes with something a little less nautical.
Battling through easily the most disgusting red wine I'd ever had, I was two (admittedly very good) dishes into a five-course set dinner when trouble hit in the form of Vincent himself.
"Hello sir, for your next course, we have for you the tripe".
Having overseen the curious choice of vino, Vincent was now presenting me with a plate of cow's stomach-lining. I didn't know what to do. A pot plant was near and I thought about discreetly sliding some of the dog food-equivalent into it, but the foliage was too sparse.
Trying my best to eat the vomitous pile of brain-like goop without it actually touching my tongue, I gave up about a third of the way in. I made an attempt to rearrange the remains into a smaller-looking mound, but there was no hiding my failure.
"Oh, so you don't like the tripe?" snarled Vincent. Terrified, I lied, saying something about saving room for the final two courses. And it was then the penny finally dropped. Vincent wasn't just comically gruff, incapable of choosing a good drop and fond of offal, he was doing this as a metaphoric one-fingered salute. For him, this Kiwi travel writer of the unsophisticated palette and poor timekeeping needed to be taught a lesson, in this case, one involving something noone should ever have to eat.
* Name changed to protect me from a revenge-seeking chef.
The Hollywood Hills P House
A quick yarn about Airbnb gone wrong. The first indication was probably the question/statement: "You don't mind that we smoke pot in the house do you?" I told them it was okay, as my room was separate, not realising that my "luxurious bedroom in the Hollywood Hills" was really half of what was once a full living room. And instead of a wall as a partition, there was a flimsy curtain to keep out the sounds and fumes of my hosts.
The marijuana was one thing, but when a chemical smell I knew wasn't from Spray n' Wipe or Pledge starting wafting through, my four-night, $800 booking was starting to look like one of my worse investments. After two nights I did a runner, but unfortunately, the sort of runner where you still pay full price. Good times.
Tim Roxborogh hosts Newstalk ZB's The Two, Coast Soul on Coast and on iHeartRadio and writes the music and travel blog RoxboroghReport.com.
