mm. i don’t much like it, the speedy passing of months. five months ago, a kindly reader told me i might like hardware societe — it really seems like it was just weeks ago (which i suppose it was, technically, just a lot of ’em), but it wasn’t until last week that i made it there.

singapore girl was in town for a short spell, and running behind about five, ten minutes in the rain when i showed up. a friendly waitress with fetching sailor tattoos granted me the last marble-topped table, and then brought water and took an order for a hot chocolate. the amazing and forgiving thing about gestational diabetes is the unexpected mercies that it grants — hot chocolates have proven to have no ill effect on blood sugar levels. even this one:

it came, a generous jug of hot, frothed, chocolate-flecked milk and a cup, empty but for the knob of softened chocolate dribbled with cream. perched on a spoon was a tiny chewy doughnut. all up, i poured two cups of hot chocolate from the jug, and it wasn’t until late in the game that i discovered there was a sizeable mass of chocolate hidden in the bottom of that as well. it made for a particularly rich chocolatey beverage by the end (i’m not complaining).

midway through the first and second helping of hot chocolate, singapore girl arrived, twenty minutes late after all, and ten minutes away from the point when the lunch menu clocks in. i’d had ample time to study the breakfast menu, and had already decided… but it wouldn’t have been so terrible to start all over. as it was, the waitress urged us to put our breakfast orders through, and before too long, two fat omelettes arrived at the table.

i am wary of cafe omelettes: too often they arrive overcooked and spongy. this one was pretty much perfect — brown in spots, but soft and moist on the inside, with an edge of butter, stuffed with well-cooked asparagus spears, slabs of soft cheese — brie, or brie-like, i can’t recall — and leafy herbs. it was gone much sooner than i would’ve preferred, much like the last five months since the cafe recommendation.