IT SEEMED perverse but in one of the bloody crescendo's of the thriller Get Carter played out at the Chester Gateway stomachs were rumbling.
We were having a friends reunion - Mark, Ian and Alison drove from Liverpool to sample a wintery slice of Chester's nightlife.
We had pre booked a table at Chez Jules and deliberately sat though the two-and-a-half hour play without a morsel passing our lips.
It was therefore with a certain blood-lust that we arrived through the vales of thick pea soup fog to one of Chester's most famous and established French restaurants on Northgate Street.
All diners bring something of their own to restaurants, an argument, a romantic proposal, a business proposition, an apology - we brought the taste for meat.
It was 10.30pm, or a little before the front of house greeted us and guided us though the lively amber lit bistro - a giant, decadent French farmhouse with red and white chequered tablecloths and itinerant bottles of bordeaux.
We were seated upstairs - the smell of the French sauces, garlic and herbs caught the tastebuds.
Looking around the room there were posters and paintings of rural French towns. The one of Dijon caught my eye - I thought of mustard and wine.
Mark noticed immediately that the table was wobbling.
He took a napkin folded it into quarters and balanced the table- a sloping floor? A Pyranean farmhouse?
The bottles of Evian water we ordered were lukewarm, one of the glasses was dirty - we asked for it to be replaced.
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