La Caille

http://www.lacaille.com/

This is probably Salt Lake's Most Expensive Restaurant. After living in Salt Lake for 15 years, I have finally had a chance to experience La Caille. This is the annual Snowbird "Thanks-For-Last-Season-Let's-Do-It-Again-This-Season-U-Rah-Rah!" dinner. Mere mortals like Simon and I would never have entered the gates without the patronage of a sugar daddy like D.B., the owner of Snowbird. D.B. is a well-known figure, and his name is hardly secret; but I'll just use his initials in case he decides to Google himself and scrolls through about 8,000 references until he finds this one. He would, too.


This restaurant isn't just a building. It has le Grounds. Its own le pond. Le vineyard. Les peacocks. A place to hit golf balls. It's meant to be Country French. Think trailing vines, cobble stones, elaborate almost to the point of being tacky, but... stopping just short.


I wore my sequined skirt and gorgeous, agonizing shoes. I even wore makeup (eyeliner, lip liner, eyebrow shading - a three pencil affair)! And blew my hair dry. The ultimate. Even so, I was intimidated. I the other Snowbird people on le terrace and a server immediately appeared at my elbow. "To drink?" "White, please." Then I looked at Si's friends and saw they were actually holding mixed drinks. "What," I whispered, "Not just beer and wine?" "No! Whatever you want!" Well, hell. I found the server and changed my order to gin and tonic, since D.B. was footing the bar. "Certainly. Do you have a preferred gin?" Uhhhhh..... My mind was a blank. I was still trying to absorb the concept of free cocktails. I told her anything was fine. Later, of course, I thought I could have said, "Tanqueray, natually." The classy answers always come too late.


I had two goals for the evening. One was to stay out of D.B.'s line of fire. He's an elderly Texan, and he's been too rich for way too long. He loves to call the wives of his executive staff "darlin'" and kiss us not once, but two, maybe three times. Then he'll pay us flowery compliments, all the time spraying us with crumbs from le canape. At supper, he traditionally gets up to give a really long speech, which contains abundant Texas-isms, such as my perennial favorite: "Well, Joe got that crazy idee 'bout buildin' a tunnel raht on through the mountain, and whoo-eee! That made my heart sing, and my thing sing, and my socks roll up and down!"


My other goal was to see if the servers really had to wear the costumes I had heard about. It's true. The men all wear loose, blousy shirts and knickers. The women wear these sort of peasant dresses complete with tight, low-cut bodices. The server who took care of our table was particularly well endowed. I confess that there is no foundation garment currently available that would give me cleavage like that. She smiled at Simon and poured him an extra big glass of wine, and he turned pink, causing hilarity.

This reminds me of the story of the largest boobs I have ever seen on anyone.

My school used to be the beneficiary of funds generated by an annual party held by a club called the Martini Foundation. It was a black tie affair, and I found it to be a real challenge for my wordrobe. I fussed about all the ladies there in $500 dresses. "Don't worry about it," said my supervisor at the time. "Of course they have great dresses. They're working girls." It took me literally YEARS to figure out that she meant "escorts". For the longest time, I thought, "Well I'm a working girl...I need to find out the line of work they're in." OK, now I know. At any rate, there was a woman who attended his event for two or three years in a row, and she had decided to...enhance her God-given gifts to the point that they were insane. A gimmick. To quote a favorite local folk musician, "She was a walking, talking dirty joke." One time, Simon and I ended up in the elevator with her. She was wearing a silver cocktail dress with spaghetti straps which literally didn't make contact with her skin until they reached her clavicle, they had been pulled out so far. Eevery woman in the elevator was looking at her date to check his response; and every man in the elevator was carefully looking at the ceiling.