Would you like fries with your liver and onions?

No I wouldn't.

I'm not a big fan of the long drive to the city and back. Promised myself a good feed of liver and onions at the Steeles Deli, where they've long claimed to have the best liver and onions in town, as compensation for the aggravation.

So we get Junior out of res at Margaret Addison Hall on Charles in the heart of downtown, up to his summer place at Younge and Steeles, and we pop over to the Steeles Deli, me and the Farm Manager and four of our five juniors and a couple of add-ons.

I know what I want, and I'm literally drooling in anticipation. When it's my turn to order I say liver and onions.

She says, how do you want it?

I say, on the light side.

She says, and what kind of potatoes?

Totally redundant question. There's only one kind of potatoes you have with liver 'n onion, and if you're reading this blog you already know.

Mashed potatoes.

She says, we're out of mashed, would you like fries with that?

Huh?

What the hell goes on here?

Best liver 'n onions in town but you're outta mashed potatoes?

Sorry, but that simply does not compute.

Fries? With liver and onions?

NO!

A thousand times no!

I'm the kinda guy who took decades coming to grips with the fact that pineapple on pizza is socially acceptable... but fries with your liver and onion?

No way Jose.

So I had a Reuben instead. Mediocre at best. I swear the sauerkraut came out of a jar.

By then my tablemates were gushing over their matzah-ball soup, and I didn't want to ruin the mood, so I made do.

Meanwhile, I've got the cell-phone addicts at the table furiously googling election results from France. Seems almost seven million voters opted for communism and a strategic alliance with Venezuela. Good showing but not quite enough.

France is going into the run-off with a choice between a rabid racist and a guy who met his wife when he was fifteen years old... and she was his teacher!

Not that there's anything wrong with that...  although I do imagine it would raise eyebrows at the College of Teachers were such an outrage to unfold here. In France it's never even qualified as a scandal.

Go figure.

But the highlight of our lunch date was when one of the add-ons, a guy who is just wrapping a Doctor Phil in Chem at U of T, googled the listing for the place he's been renting a basement apartment in for years. His landlady done put the place on the market just this week.

Even though it's a little threadbare, he figured a million and a half.

I figured, threadbare or not, if it's within a comfy bicycle ride of UT, it's probably over two millions.

They found the listing.

His landlady is asking 3.49 million for a tear-down that might have fetched 500 thou ten years ago.

Wynne and Tory have no clue.