Julian, the waiter at Tantra, presented my husband with a bottle of 1993 Deutz Trio champagne and a large knife. We were celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary, and Julian thought it would be a charming demonstration if Jon "saber-ed" the bubbly, a technique which involves positioning the blade just underneath the cork and hacking off the neck of the bottle in a single clean stroke. My first instinct, of course, was to yell, "Stop! You're a doctor with medical-school loans to repay! You need to keep all your fingers because I'm just a journalist and can't support us in the nouveau-poor style to which we've become accustomed!"But sometimes even very patient and shrew-tolerant husbands need to make grand gestures, so I kept silent and watched. In the end, I needn't have worried: The Deutz cork disgorged itself as soon as the foil was removed, serving up a Pavlovian pop with no bottle-fencing required. And we still got a pretty shower of sparkling wine, foaming over the top and into our... More >>>