Waiter! There’s a Fly....

The converted root cellar of our 19th century building is what we call our Old-World stone wall wine cellar. For many clients it is a favorite place to dine. One family comes for a yearly get-together, and recently they fessed up to a ritual antic they played on our staff. Several years ago practical joker, Uncle Paul, brought a fake “fly in an ice cube” and put it in his water glass. As owner-hostess I made the rounds and when I spied the horrific culprit, I quietly replaced his glass. (I put the specked glass into the wait station for later use as an instructive “pay attention to detail” lesson.) When I left the room the group howled with laughter, and Uncle Paul sneakily retrieved the culprit cube. The group decided to hide the joker fly in a stone cranny in one of our walls. Year after year the family returned, searched for the plastic cube, and placed it in a glass of water. Unfortunate to me is that not one of my staff ever noticed the “fly,” but I was happy to realize that the joke on us was one reason for the years of laughter emanating from those cellar walls.