Citronelle I: When Idea & Reality Collide

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When Idea and Reality Collide is the first book of my trilogy, Ma Belle’s Rise and Fall, which chronicles and celebrates my tragic life in the Fine Dining spotlight, beginning with my rise to national acclaim and ending with my fall into obscurity and death. As a gourmet restaurant with an incredible view I, Ma Belle, am the Queen of Sensuality. My gorgeous third story location overlooking the Pacific Ocean supplies the setting for the multitude of personal dramas that occur.

Chef Antoine, who is passionate about his culinary art and me, is my blessing. Brain’s ideas are my curse. He corrupts Luigi, the restaurant manager, and his accomplices with visions of power, prestige and promotion, which threaten to erode my Fine Dining Experience. Simultaneously he deludes Chef Antoine with notions of French superiority and Space, my headwaiter, with Eastern philosophies of detachment - dissuading them from taking action to protect me, Ma Belle. Luckily the Universe arranges circumstances to awaken their Hearts and get them involved.

“As Mother Earth spun on her axis
Heaven’s glowing orb rose to brighten my first day.
All decked out in my fancy new clothes -
I was shining with the fresh glow of my birth day -
Ready to please and arouse my new fans -
Faces flush with high expectations.
Exuberantly hungry like a Virgin - ready to pleasure the world -
My Doors open. Humanity swarms inside my Temple.
I spread my legs - my beauty open for all to see.
Making wild passionate love to my Public -
Immediately lost in ecstatic embrace - Barely coming up for air -
Merging our selves, human and restaurant, in reckless abandon -
Dissolving into the Void - Merging with the Vortex -
Aaiiiieeeeee!!!”

Space, my ghostwriter, has worked as a waiter for over thirty years. These are also his memoirs of his sojourn with me. Learn about the inner workings of gourmet restaurants as well the Origins of Restaurants and Dining, the Central Coast Wine industry, the Principle of Aesthetic Necessity, and the mystical nature of the Fine Dining Experience.

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