Q. How should one discourage a fellow diner from helping himself too greedily from a dish you are enjoying yourself? A writer friend invited me to lunch in the River Room at the Savoy Hotel. The treat was only marred when the pudding course arrived: ‘opalys white chocolate jelly sphere’. This was a thin chocolate shell over which the waiter poured perhaps a dessert spoon of hot chocolate sauce, bursting the shell and revealing the content within — a raspberry hibiscus ice cream.
It was the single most delicious thing I have ever eaten but I had only had one spoonful when my friend’s husband, who was next to me and had not ordered a pudding, asked could he taste it. ‘Of course,’ I said. He then ate say, six spoons’ worth to my further one.

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