First, a confession. I don't like the taste of alcohol. There I said it. Phew.
Second, some caveats. I do like the idea of booze, and also some of the short term effects, but just not really the taste. I also typically enjoy the first cold beer after a long week - as it tastes like freedom - but the second and third mainly just taste like beer, which is a shame.
Third, a question. If I don't like it, why do I drink it?
In my mind my relationship with booze is a bit like a nudist's relationship with clothes. They wear them because everyone else does, but if you ask them privately they really don't see the point. Sure they look nice and sparkly and cover the flabby bits, but we'd definitely be much more comfortable letting everything hang loose and drinking a chilled mango juice instead.
In the long and distant future I can imagine people looking back on our booze-sodden lives with withering contempt, like how we look at black and white films where smarmy men with slicked back hair blow cigarette smoke in people's faces without a second thought. In future we'll probably all be hooked on safe synthetic drugs and legal highs, which give all the benefits of booze – mainly better dance moves and a readier audience for bad jokes – without the horrendous side effects and vomit inducing hangovers.
That's not to say "booze is terrible/we're all awful people/burn the witches" etc. I can see why and how people like it. I just don't. Like fennel. And liquorice. And veganism. Perfectly acceptable things to like, but just not for me right now.
Even in my fun-less utopian world where conspicuous consumption of booze is a throwback, certain things will survive. Like bars. Because, well, let's be fair, most people like booze even if I don't.
Dot Cod, a restaurant/bar in the most central of Central Hong Kong, will, I suspect be one of those cockroach-like survivors of the inevitable booze-purge/nuclear winter.
Like many things in Hong Kong beloved by foreign men of a certain age sporting old rugby shirts, large tailored shorts and tan deck shoes, Dot Cod is already a throwback. It is affiliated to one of the old school members' clubs, the Hong Kong Cricket Club (where, of course, actually playing cricket appears to be actively discouraged), and operates as a de facto club house for the well-heeled membership in a prime location in the business district.
Weekday mornings at Dot Cod are for the laces and braces business tycoon, chomping on bacon and eggs and talking business, with his tie slung over his shoulder to avoid getting ketchup on it before the 9am staff briefing.
Lunchtimes are for "doing business", by which I mean "eating" and "drinking" with your "clients" and "contacts", ideally over an extended period of the afternoon while poor hacks back at the office get on with the real work.
Evenings there are for post work happy hour, a cold glass of bubbly while you digest the travails of your short and flatulent day and reminisce about how "bloody Honkers" was so much better before the Chinese took it all back.
For those who haven't been to Dot Cod, the weird thing is that the setting for all this old school expat chin-wabbling looks like the basement restaurant at a motorway Holiday Inn, not some fan-cooled verandah gazing down over Hong Kong harbour. In fact, it is actually in a basement. And the cream walls, thick white table linen and light brown and slightly worn furniture do look - a little comically - like they have been bought on the cheap from a poorly performing Best Western.
The food, as you may have surmised, is nothing spectacular. Having enjoyed a beautifully prepared and very millennial breakfast at Blue Supreme in Sheung Wan a few days earlier (all fiery Shakshuka, Elvis Presley French toast and creamy scrambled eggs with salmon roe – which were all as great as they sound), my eggs benedict at Dot Cod was a stark reminder of why, despite being self-entitled egomaniacs who interact only through Instagram, millennials do know better than their parents when it comes to breakfast. My poached eggs at Dot Cod were covered in a thin layer of hot water, the hollandaise was charred and gluey and the bread barely warm. My dining companion had scrambled eggs and bacon, where the eggs had the rubbery texture of cottage cheese and the bacon was actually dried out ham, tossed on the plate like a cigarette butt on the floor. I honestly would have preferred a McDonalds.
I visited separately for happy hour, downed two glasses of average sauvignon blanc and then, as I am a lightweight and was, therefore, hammered, ate french fries, scotch eggs and mini sausages rolled in some honey/Dijon by the fistful. It was calorific, salty and forgettable, as most food is when you don't like booze, get drunk easily, and haven't retired from drinking yet.
Somewhere in here there is a moral about me not drinking, becoming a new man and not visiting the same places that were good in the '90s and have lost their charm (but, incredibly, not their customers). But there is a large part of me that knows I'll probably still have the odd drink from time to time and make the inevitable mistake of flipping my tie over my shoulder and agreeing to go for breakfast at Dot Cod now and again. Oh well.