Sunday, February 19, 2012

One Woman's Taste

Grannie mentioned in a recent comment to my post below that she had ordered a baked sweet potato as part of her Valentine's dinner last week. The waitress asked if she wanted cinnamon and brown sugar on it and she replied that she preferred sour cream and butter. The waitress looked at her as if she had ordered something really odd. Since neither of these are super healthy toppings, the critique had to be for another reason, such as personal taste. It was off-putting to Grannie since she was the customer!

During my visit to Charlotte, NC, I celebrated an early Valentine's Day with two dinners in fancy restaurants.  ENSO and Blue if you want to check them out, you can click on the names.  Blue had tremendous attentive service and the food was good if not great although they were right-on with the wine pairing.   ENSO on the other hand was high energy and certainly for the young.  We were the only gray heads in the restaurant, but did not feel out of place in anyway. The room was filled with young music, beautiful young girls eating dinner and being waited on by handsome male waiters, some of whom most certainly should have been gay, they were so perfect in appearance.  The food was excellent!

But as we left Charlotte that Sunday and since it is an 8 hour drive for us, we had to have lunch mid-way somewhere.  We stopped at some chain restaurant whose name I do not remember.  I had been eating heavy all weekend and chain restaurants are not known for their healthy food.  Therefore on one of the sides to my fish dish I ordered veggies and dip rather than fried rice, french fries, etc.  The waitress a short and stocky black women looked at me and smiled.  "You don't want that.  Are you sure?"

I asked her, "Why not, were the veggies old or something?"

She replied, "No, but it is just raw vegetables with ranch dip.  You REALLY want that?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Are you sure?"  she repeated.  Then she made a face and said, "OK." as she wrote down my order.

I do not mind wait staff telling me about problems with certain dishes based on their opinions, but critiquing my taste in food is something else.


13 comments:

  1. I've never had an experience like that but it certainly is true tastes vary widely. Some of it is regional. I've had a very hard time finding good (Texas style) barbeque and Mexican (Tex-Mex) food in the Pacific Northwest. I once had a neighbor that ate sugar on tomatoes and it freaked me out.

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  2. Those comments say more about the rudeness of the speaker than your taste in food. I have noticed a growing tendency for grocery clerks to chat about the items I am buying and I often find it annoying. One woman "helpfully" offered to change out my container of oil cured olives because, as she held them up to the light, "these have gone bad."

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  3. I have a grandson who doesn't like potatoes at all-- in any form. When a small child requests veggies instead, they do look a little surprised.

    For a snack, I love baby carrots and blue cheese dip/dressing. It's certainly not lo-cal but really yummy

    (they are making these word tests harder and harder to read. trying this again)

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  4. Anonymous2:55 PM

    I always ate sugar on tomatoes, when i was growing up, It was a swedish family thing I think. I still prefer them that way. We do have really good Tex Mex in the NW, just need to know where to find it. I often ask for fruit instead of fries with my burger. Some places do look at me funny, but always serve it. bkj

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  5. I think when I lived in the South I may have made a sort of cultural gaffe in a restaurant when the wait staff failed to recommend the veggies. Me: "You mean they're limp and overcooked?"
    Waiter: "No, they aren't cooked at all. They're still crunchy...eeuww!" Although I loved so much about the south, the prevailing attitude towards veggies wasn't a plus! But surely that's changing now, if not at the particular restaurant where you stopped.

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  6. Oh Tabor, did you have to add "Since neither of these are super healthy toppings"? Now I really feel guilty. LOL

    I did not mention that when the waitress brought my plate I offered her a clean utensil and asked if she would like to try the potato. You would think I was offering her a taste of dogfood.

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  7. I LOVE raw veggies with ranch dressing. We always have ranch and always have baby carrots in our house.

    Well, not right now. I ate all the carrots. My daughter has not discovered this calamity. :)

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  8. Along with less than favorable customer service, I find that cashiers, waitresses and others find it ok to include themselves in my conversation with my companion or to talk about their weekend activities... I have to agree that many food choices are based on where you were raised....lots of butter or sugar in preparing food is not how I grew up.

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  9. Veggies and salad dressing are the thing at our families tables except for a couple of aunties who look at us like we are eating something poisonous if the veggies are green, not in a restaurant though. How odd.

    I, too am having trouble reading the word test before posting, too blurry to translate. Takes me several tries to get one I can see. I copy my note first so I don't have to reinvent it.

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  10. I love high calorie food and have, therefore, stopped buying it. Raw veggies are a staple for me now when I'm hungry and I like French Onion dip. Admittedly, that defeats the low calorie of the veggies, but it's better than chips.

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  11. When I was researching the area in San Diego where we recently stayed one of the motels was known for having a "world famous restaurant," so we ate there and discovered that the actual name of the place was the "world famous restaurant. It was excellent.

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  12. When I was researching the area in San Diego where we recently stayed one of the motels was known for having a "world famous restaurant," so we ate there and discovered that the actual name of the place was the "world famous restaurant. It was excellent.

    This new word verification is a bitch. I'm now on my third try and counting.

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  13. I, too, have never had restaurant help infer negatively on anything I ordered.

    Food tastes are interesting. Sugar sprinkled lightly on tomatoes was commonplace where I grew up in the Midwest. What seemed strange and distasteful to me was salt on watermelon which some people like.

    Recently I had a 90+ yrs lady swallowing therapy patient complain about her lunch veggies. She could chew just fine, but her son echoed her view noting the problem to be the veggies needed to be southern soft.

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