IF OPPOSITES attract, my girlfriend must really fancy me when we sit down for dinner.
We have a lot of things in common but taste in food really isn’t one of them.
She is a pseudo-veggie who occasionally dabbles in chicken but won’t go anywhere near beef, and I’m a meat beast who loves nothing more than a good steak or hunk of lamb.
Worse than that she loves mushrooms, which are clearly grown in Satan’s own allotment and make me shudder whenever I think of them.
But just when I thought our taste couldn’t be any different, she goes and orders vinegar sorbet.
I mean, come now. She didn’t see me eating mince on a bed of jelly, or chicken a la fudge, did she?
The dessert menu at The City was full of lovely things, but balsamic sorbet was not one I was scrabbling to try.
It tasted just like you’d expect frozen vinegar to taste like.
Not for me ta – I prefer my puddings more sweet and, well, more puddingy, so I stuck to my champagne version while my other half umm-ed and aah-ed at her acidic concoction.
To be honest, sorbet was the only dessert that we could fit in after such a slap-up meal.
No sooner had we put in out orders than we were offered a bread roll and a small bowl of tapenade – a lovely touch.
I’d asked for a starter of chicken liver parfait with red onion chutney and melba toast (£5.95), which I claimed was for the two of us to share to cover up the fact I was a bit of a bloater.
The slab of rich man’s pate that arrived was so huge that I almost wished I was sharing it – almost, that is, until I tasted the wonderfully fluffy parfait on a piece of the crisp toast.
Rich and flavoursome, it was topped off nicely with the chunky chutney.
For the main course I’d opted for the rump steak (£13.95) which came with massive home-cut chips and a choice of sauce.
It was cooked to perfection – chargrilled on the outside and pink and juicy in the middle – and the “chips” were more like wedges.
My girlfriend’s Thai chicken curry (£9.95) was packed with banana and enormous chunks of bird – sometimes it’s tricky to find meat in curries, but that wasn’t a problem here.
Both of the meals came served on stylish red plates, which fitted in with the general chic atmosphere of this recently-opened restaurant.
The name The City is, of course, a tribute to the long-gone City Bar that was one of Aberdeen’s most popular watering holes.
After our desserts (£4.95 each) and a bottle of wine, the bill came to just a shade over £50.