In the interest of Culinary Vicariousness, we are exploring and presenting to you the Strictly Gustatory Adventures of world-renowned super-spy James Bond, as recorded in the novels of Commander Ian Fleming.
We have reached Fleming’s final Bond novel, completed after his death. According to Wikipedia, “the manuscript had passed through the hands of his copy editor, William Plomer”; if Bond seems underfed, it may be because “[m]uch of the detail contained in the previous novels was missing, as this was often added by Fleming in the second draft.”
There will be one more installment of this series featuring the short stories collected in Octopussy and The Living Daylights.
The Man with the Golden Gun
Bond took another shower and dressed in shirt, slacks, and sandals and wandered over to the little bar on the waterfront and ordered a double Walker’s deluxe bourbon on the rocks and watched the pelicans diving for their dinner.
He showed Bond to a comfortable air-conditioned room with a view of the pool and the wide mirror of Kingston Harbour. He said, “What is it this time? Cubans or smuggling? They’re the popular targets these days.”
“Just on my way through. Got any lobsters?”
“Of course.”
“Be a good chap and save two for dinner. Broiled with melted butter. And a pot of that ridiculously expensive foie gras of yours. All right?”
Her drink came. She sipped it carefully. Bond remembered that she rarely drank and didn’t smoke. He ordered another for himself and felt vaguely guilty that this was his third double and that she wouldn’t know it and when it came wouldn’t recognize it as a double. The champagne wouldn’t count.
“Good evening. Could I have a Red Stripe?”
Bond ordered a bottle of Walker’s deluxe bourbon, three glasses, ice, and for nine o’clock, eggs Benedict.
The eggs came and were good. The mousseline sauce might have been mixed at Maxim’s.
Bond got out of bed, gave himself a cold shower, and drank a glass of water.
The red-coated barman asked him what he would have, and he said, “Some pink gin. Plenty of bitters. Beefeater’s.”
He went off to his room, swallowed two heavy slugs of bourbon, had a cold shower, and lay on his bed and looked at the ceiling until it was 8:30 and time for dinner.
Dinner—the conventional “expensive” dinner of a cruise ship—was as predictable as such things usually are. The waiters brought on the dessicated smoked salmon with a thimbleful of small-grained black caviar, fillets of some unnamed native fish (possibly silk fish) in a cream sauce, a “poulet suprême” (a badly roasted broiler with a thick gravy), and the bombe suprise.
Previous installments of this series may be found here.
