Ever go to a restaurant and know that something is wrong with the food -- for example, that it was cooked in rancid oil -- but you eat it anyway, as if you had a second brain controlling your actions that did not know what your real brain knew? And then afterwards, you wonder why in hell you do things like that?
ADDED: I should say, the restaurant in question was not the place I featured in a post yesterday. And if you're a Madison restauranteur wondering if I'm talking about you, don't check your credit card receipts. I was there today, but I paid cash.
August 31, 2006
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Yes -- I used to. Now I tell them, 'cause I figure the chef would want to know. I'm doing them a favor by telling them. Not raising a stink is being polite, but there's such a thing as too polite! If you think you're doing them a favor though, telling is much easier.
No, but something similar just the other day. At a shopping mall, we sat down in an utterly charmless environment -- the only sit-down restaurant in the place -- resigned to having mediocre burgers but at least a martini or two. The martinis turned out to be laced with some liquor-lite called "apple gin," which we decided against. There was musak, there were screaming kids, there was cardboard hamburg. You don't want to go there.
Ugh. This hits very close to home - I had a terrible bout in the middle of the night that I assume was food poisoning. It's my second episode this summer, both times from restaurant food. And last month my (adult) niece and nephew were deathly ill for over a week from food poisoning, again from restaurant food. But they, and I, did not suspect it while eating so it doesn't exactly fit your question. When I am suspicious, I don't take the risk.
How many times do I have to tell you.....
....if you don't eat beef, that solves your problem.
Never order beef, or fish at a restaurant, in most cases.
Peace, Maxine
"but you eat it anyway, as if you had a second brain controlling your actions that did not know what your real brain knew? And then afterwards, you wonder why in hell you do things like that?"
Sounds like a good description of a lot of dates I've been on.
Yes. It is as though a separate eating function takes over and cannot be stopped until the process is complete.
I have been in a couple situations where I felt like I had to eat something nasty--one time I was a guest of someone else at a restaurant, and once was at an office pot-luck where a co-worker had said "oh wait till you try my dish tomorrow!!!!' and I had to force it down despite its yak-factor.
(I am afraid to complain about anything at a restaurant, fearing the whole spit/piss/snot in your food phenomenon...)
This brings to mind an SNL skit where the charater dies in an accident and he goes to heaven and is greeted by a 3rd-tier angel. The newly dead guy asks who killed JFK and the angel says he does not have that level of info. So the guy asks the angel "what's the worst thing I ever ate?" and the angel replies ..."you really don't want to know".
And I have a cast-iron stomach and never get sick from what I eat.
Maxine: "How many times do I have to tell you.........if you don't eat beef, that solves your problem."
"Never order beef, or fish at a restaurant, in most cases."
Peace, Maxine
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Oh my goodness, Oma just phoned and left a voice message: "We just returned from China" ~ I'll let you decide what you think she said next.
Beef, Maxine? In China, it's anything that has a spine, and doesn't necessarily say moo.
Vegetarian Chop Suey: The Queen's choice ~ with a gin & tonic, of course.
It's not lack of assertiveness. I've often sent things back. I was engaged in conversation and just autopiloting the meal. I knew it was rancid but it just wasn't on the dominant track of what I was paying attention to.
Palladian: Yes, exactly. I was thinking of the more general metaphor. There are so many things you put up with even though you know they are bad, because you seem to have this other you that somehow doesn't know. Even though you do know!
And don't worry. I'm not sick. I haven't vomited since the 1970s.
There's a politeness factor that can have appalling strength. I had a friend who was raped in a public parking lot, and raised no outcry. When she took self-defense classes later, she could not bring herself to make any noise when landing a blow. The instructor had to dismiss the other students before she could let herself shout while striking.
Good middle class persons do not make a fuss - even when it might do them a lot of good.
The really difficult thing about that situation is, I think people often feel inclined to lower their tip, as if either the state of the food has anything to do with the server or the tip went in part to the chef.
Maxine: "How many times do I have to tell you.........if you don't eat beef, that solves your problem."
Not so, Maxine. Ever smell rancid pasta? Or lettuce and tomato that have been kept around one day too long? I've been served these items before, at which times I politely sent back the offending dishes and contented myself with a beer on the house.
It ain't just meat that goes bad.
And you tell me that I do not squeal on bad places. Ann, give us a name!
nedludd, we'll have to exchange kitchen stories someday. I never got the luxury of being off for brunch, though; all our top talent worked Wednesday through Sunday. Brunch is big business in New Orleans. We went through quarts of hollandaise.
Let me add rice to your list of things to avoid. I got food poisoning from rice in the steam table of a nation-wide healthy foods market; it was just at the wrong temperature, sitting there all day long. Now at home, I toss rice within an hour of dinner, too bad for fans of leftovers; it's cheap and easy to make and I never, ever want to feel like that again.
Thank you especially for that vivid image of what mussels do in their spare time.z
No! I'm paranoid about funny tastes in food, so I'm hyperaware.
I could definitely apply your general metaphor to some interactions with friends.
Elizabeth - If you want to save rice leftovers, spoon individual portions into ziplock baggies and freeze them. Works like a charm.
Nina: One of our colleagues who is nervous about blogging asked me the other day if I worried about being sued. I said I didn't and that I do take some precautions, and not naming this restaurant is one of them. Note that this wouldn't be a matter of stating an opinion about the food but a very specific fact.
The stories of bacteria are disturbing, but my problem in this case was rancid oil, which isn't contaminated, just old to the point where the flavor changes. It is unheathful though. You really are supposed to throw oil, nuts, etc. out once they have that smell. I think some people don't recognize the smell and don't realize it's not right.
A thick stew or sauce can take over twelve hours to cool if it is in a deep pot and not stirred. A moist protien rich environment at between 40-140 degrees for an extended period of time will give you the chance to find out just how many threads there on are the botls that hold your roliet to the floor. Shallow containers (lewss than four inches deep), stirred and put into a sink with ice water will cool your food quickly. This will also save wear and tear on the fridge.
I keep quart sized bottles of water in the freezer so when I have to cool something down in a hurry, like a stock, it can be placed in the middle of the pot, which is also sitting in an ice bath in the sink.
re: restaurant horror stories...
I used to be a deejay, then became a mild-mannered telecom engineer. When the telecom economy collapsed in 2001, I became a restaurant server, bartender, manager and cook. I did that until I found another telecom job in 2004, but I look at restaurants in a whole new light now.
Nedludd is spot-on - brunch can be scary for many restaurants. However, there are plenty of safe options at most of them. Omlette bars generally feature meats (sausages, hams, bacon) and shredded cheeses that are prepped that day. Some vegetables can be reused from the night before, but most people can easily see a bad veggie and avoid it before a bad cut of meat. Veggies tend to show heat and bacteria damage before meat.
Bacteria playgrounds - ditto on the Hollandaise sauce in many restaurants. I'm also wary of ordering soup later in the evening - that stuff has been sitting out for hours at that point. Real tiramisu with ladyfingers and marscapone, not that faux cheesecake that most places sell, and large Chesapeake Bay style crabcakes can be dangerous. They are made with eggs, and tiramisu isn't cooked - it's simply put in the fridge to set - and large crabcakes, while delicious, seldom get the center hot enough to kill any bacteria in the egg mixture in the filler.
Also, be afraid of any restaurant that won't allow you to have a burger cooked less than medium or well done. They'll say it's a health code violation, but that's not the case at all. Many other places will cook burgers at whatever temp you like. It's more that those places either don't have cooks who properly know how to temp a burger, or they're not using a completely sterile beef supplier. Good steakhouses will use uncooked cuts of meat and chop them up for burgers or cheesesteaks, but lower places, and most mid-priced chains, use pre-prepped patties that can be made from multiple cuts and multiple cows, increasing the likelihood of infection.
Maxine - If you look at the health code violations of local restaurants, many of them are closed to due improper storage, cleaning and temperature control of vegeatables. The meat areas are usually pretty strictly monitored, but vegetable prep is often near a dish a dish sink or mopping area. Rodent defecation, bacterial growth or chemical contamination are more common with vegetables than meat. Why? Meat's expensive to purchase and replace. A head of lettuce costs a restaurant pennies, and thowing that out isn't the issue that a 10 dollar filet is.
Another big violator is pre-cooked rice at Asian restaurants. Many Chinese places will prep a big bowl of rice and then let it sit out during the course of the day. Not the most sanitary thing in the world.
Hollywood Freak and Knoxgirl if the food is ever bad at a restaurant, by all means send it back. Just don't make a song-and-dance number out of it, or make it sound like it's the worst thing that's ever happened to you in your life. A simple comment to your server or the manager on duty should suffice. Knoxgirl, the movie "Waiting" has a pretty funny, disgusting thing about the woman wanting her food redone, and the cooks being disgusting on it, but I've never seen anybody knowingly ruin somebody's food. If you're nice and polite, people are nice and polite (usually) back. If the food itself is rancid, they need to know before they serve it to other people. But, Hollywood Freak, never, ever, ever accept bad, funny tasting food, ESPECIALLY anything that tastes like chlorine. The only thing that tastes like chlorine is chlorine, and could be a sign of bleached meat to kill a bacteria/fungal infection, or of a chemical contamination. You guys should have spoken up immediately. A responsible staff wants to know about problems like that.
Elizabeth,
I just felt my Filipino and Chinese relatives have a heart attack at the notion of throwing away hour old rice. :) We fridge the portion we don't use, and it comes out just fine, although those older portions usually end up getting used to make fried rice. You really wanna use older rice for that anyway; fresh rice just doesn't seem to come out right when you try to fry it.
Although in my personal experience, I've noticed that the long grain variety my family uses seems to hold up better over time than the medium and short grains you see used by some folks & restaurants elsewhere. Never stopped to figure out why that was so, or even if anyone else has noticed what I have.
Knoxgirl,
Seriously, don't be afraid of speaking up at a restaurant. As long as you're polite about it, just about any place I've been to, worked, or knew someone that worked at it would be much more embarrased than angry, and would probably fix you up something fresh. They're really, really worried about someone writing a letter to the editor, to some local investigative reporter, to their corporate HQ (if they're a chain or franchise), or worse yet, to the Health Inspectors.
Professor,
If the bad oil at that restaurant was just a one time thing, then it could be a new employee or some dumb mistake like simply forgetting to change it out. On the other hand, if it keeps on happening, I'd definitely stop going.
Thanks for the advice, everyone. I will try sending it back next time. (I was a server years ago and had a particularly sadistic coworker who would routinely do gross stuff to customers' food who inconvenienced her... so this has made me a bit paranoid.)
Everyone on this thread should read Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain. In addition to being very entertaining, there's a ton of "insider" information about restaurants, and he has a whole chapter on what to avoid when you eat out and the reasons. Maxine, he also says that raw vegetables are more dangerous than most meat. The one thing he says to NEVER eat, is mussels, for the reason nedludd sites.
Speaking of a mussel lover, I must say I'm discouraged! Lombardino's here in Madison has a Mussel appetizer that is to die for. Well, maybe that's not a good adjective :)
There are so many restaurants to choose from in Madison -- if I had a bad oil episode, I'd probably stop going to that restaurant altogether unless its location was just too convenient. I've had too many meals where you eat and think afterwards "What was memorable about that!?" and kick yourself for spending hard-earned money on mediocrity.
I will never go there again.
On the subject of two brains, I often get a subliminal message when speaking with my teenager. The subliminal part of "Kristy's mom is coming to pick me up" didn't break through until the police arrived at my door a few days later. It is all in the context, of course, but if I paid attention to that low level nagging voice, I might have saved my daughter from what turned out to be an embarassing (although potentially dangerous) situation.
I had one meal out in December 2005, and was hospitalized with pneumonia about a week later. Strange. Couldn’t figure out how I got the bug, but figured it was probably from the restaurant. So, following my hospital stay, I vowed not to eat in restaurants, and did not for 1-1/2 years, and surprisingly, I was bug-less. My house docter actually missed me, and when I finally got my first cold in 1-1/2 years, in June 2006, it was a grand reunion and we both had to catch up on all the family stories.
With this thinking, we avoid restaurants and only visit a restaurant once a year at Valentine’s Day, and then we order everything on the menu and dine for hours with a fine wine. And so far, still bug-less.
I eat in restaurants several times a week and I've had 1 cold in over 10 years.
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