Hibachi! Americans just wet their panties over it. And why not?
It's simple… you are seated at a communal table and a chef comes in and cooks in front of you on a table-sized griddle. Often they do simple tricks, like creating a volcano from onion slices, filling it with oil and lighting it on fire. Sometimes they toss a super-hot shrimp into your mouth causing 2nd degree burns, etc.
So the chef goes around the table and double checks your order before he cooks. Ours went like this:
Me: Steak and shrimp, medium well, fried rice.
Renee: Steak and shrimp, medium well, fried rice. My daughter will have chicken and fried rice.
Guy #1: Soba Noodles, Steak, well done.
Girl #1: Chicken and Fried rice
Girl #2: Ok, can you make sure that you don’t use any soy sauce on my food? That means you have to make my fried rice separately and cook my chicken separately and you’ll have to clean the grill before you cook my food and could you cook the chicken without using any heat and do you use soy sauce at all? and also can you make sure the chicken didn’t come from an egg and please don’t use any salt and pepper. Also when you cook the chicken can you make sure the pieces are always aligned with magnetic north and also don’t use any soy sauce, did I mention that? And don’t forget I cant have any soy sauce. Is that Ok, did you get all that?
Me: (sound of my fork being pushed into her eyeball).
Renee looked at her… hell, even her friends looked at her and I know what they were thinking…it was the same thing everyone was thinking. Even the chef was thinking it:
“Miss, you are one giant asshat. If you don’t like soy sauce, why the fuck would you come to a Japanese restaurant? Why don’t you stay home and eat your dry rice crackers with faux cream cheese and facon and then you can do us all a favor and lay down in the parking lot, hopefully something heavy will roll over you.
Well maybe the chef wasn't thinking exactly that…but I sure was.
Chef’s are happy when diners love their food. They take time and effort to create dishes, to get them right and the last freakin thing they want is to be told by some idiot with a gastrointestinal problem, that they want the dish altered to fit their issue. If you have a problem don’t make it the chef’s problem. If you cant eat wheat, don’t go out for pasta, if you cant eat dairy, don’t go out for fondue.
I guess what Im saying is this…don’t go to a real restaurant and screw with the menu. Don’t screw with the chef. Don’t say something stupid like can I have the pasta primavera without oil or vegetables?
Can I have the Wild Boar Ravioli but with no sauce?
Can I have Pasta with Four Cheeses but can you leave out the cheese?
Can I have the suckling pig but can you make it taste not like pig?
It’s really simple, we get it. You want to eat “healthy” which by definition seems to mean “stuff that tastes like shit”. Stop taking what used to be a rewarding social engagement, a time to unwind, a time to taste new flavors, share dishes and have conversation and turn it into yet another struggle against something that doesn’t need to be fought with.
Its not a chore, don’t make it into one.
And if you are a vegan, stop going to lunch with everyone. No one is interested in trying to accommodate whatever raw-foodist, slimy soy cubes and sprout dishes you will eat. Some of us want to leave the restaurant having eaten something that didn’t taste like it was scraped off the ass of a chicken.
Bon Appetit!
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