It’s true. I had dinner with the French Ambassador to Costa Rica, at his home, or more precisely, in his garden. No, I was not the only guest of the Ambassador; also in attendance were Jack, our friends Wayne and Marguerite, and 196 others.
Dinner in the Ambassador’s Garden
We began the evening the same way we always do when we’re headed for a new destination: by getting hopelessly lost. Fortunately, we’d given ourselves an extra hour.
Since the streets here don’t have names, Marguerite and the secretary at the ambassador’s house decided to use the landmarks Taco Bell and Pops (an ice cream parlor) as a point of reference. The helpful lady at the residence sent us Google directions from there. Later, we found out that there is more than one place in San Pedro where these two icons share a block. After we’d made the requisite number of turns, we looked around, and found nary a trace of the ambassador’s house.
We pulled into a gas station and spotted a man on the sidewalk. Wayne shot my window down, since I was the designated Spanish speaker. No, we didn’t know the address of the residence, or the phone number. “It starts with a lot of 2s,” said Marguerite. After a short conversation, I thrust our Google directions into his hands. He studied them for a moment, then reached into his white lab coat, pulled out a cell phone, and began calling on our behalf.
We were on the wrong side of town, he discovered, but happily, he was going home, and lived near our destination. We would follow him.
Our hero got into his car and waited while Wayne pulled up behind him. Off we went on a fifteen minute drive through San Pedro, turning, it seemed, at every corner until none of us knew where we were.
Finally, he pulled over in front of a fabulous house. We thanked our rescuer profusely, and joined the cheerful procession of well-dressed folks into the ambassador’s house.
The Ambassador, flanked by the Men from Monaco
The Ambassador, Fabrice Delloye, gave speeches in French and Spanish, and introduced the famous among us. Two of them, from Monaco, sat at our table. They neither made eye contact with nor spoke to us, so we never learned why they were famous.
Then a representative from the French Alliance showed us slides of termite damage to their headquarters, a victorian house in Barrio Amon, built in 1895. Our event, Opera Gourmet, had been held for the benefit of that building.
The Menu
When the speeches were finally over, we ate the beautifully prepared and presented dinner of timbale of prawns as a starter; boneless breast of chicken in a currant sauce; a “choir” of young vegetables; and a decadent chocolate Marquise for dessert. As we ate, we chatted happily to the other people at our table, and listened to arias from familiar operas sung by ARSYSS, a french pop vocal group .
We loved our dinner with the ambassador. And we didn’t get lost going home!
