The blandness of despair
Sep. 27th, 2014 05:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceI am, I think, giving up. It is better not to hope and not to try, than to hope and to try and to be perpetually disappointed...
No, no, this is nothing to do with writing. Writingwise, I am prepared to go on and on regardless. No, today I speak of restaurants and waitstaff, and the impossibility of persuading anybody that I really do mean what I say. I'm a middle-aged white guy, after all; of course they know better than me, where my tolerances lie.
We will set aside the fact that I tried to order cuttlefish, only to be told that it was calamari. No. No, it really isn't. Never mind. I'll have the beef instead. You know, the one with the three chilli peppers next to it as a sign of hotness. "But I want it really spicy," quoth I. "I do mean that: really, really spicy." "He really does," quoth m'wife in support.
When it came? Well, it was I suppose not bland. Normal people, I was told, might find it hot. I do try to make it clear that I'm really not normal in this regard, but that's the thing. They just refuse to believe me. I'd sign them a waiver if they wanted, making it entirely clear that the heat of the dish was my responsibility, but I don't believe it would make any difference.
I can ask for hot sauces, of course, and I do - but that's not the same, it's not really what I want. I want the chilli cooked into the dish, taking its place among the other flavours. As the menu promises: I'm not asking for chilli in dishes where it doesn't belong, I'm always ordering the hottest thing on offer. In hopes, buffered by trying to ensure they really mean it. Which is what I should probably give up.
I did think about carrying around my own little bottle of my own hot sauce, but that would irritate everybody: me because there's a depth of pointlessness in paying someone else to cook me a meal and then trying to make it taste like I'd cooked it myself; and them because it's just plain rude. I'd be furious if someone flourished their own prepared sauce at my table, whether they were paying me or not. So no, won't be doing that. Will be living a life of eternal blandness instead, sans plead and sans expectation.
(Tho' Lucy promises to take me to her local Taiwanese restaurant, where the heat levels are said to be satisfactory to the point of excellence...)
Meanwhile, I am smoking pork on the barbecue and proving dough for sesame-seed buns, while I lay out my new plants on my ready vegetable bed, to make a winter garden full of brassicas and beans.
No, no, this is nothing to do with writing. Writingwise, I am prepared to go on and on regardless. No, today I speak of restaurants and waitstaff, and the impossibility of persuading anybody that I really do mean what I say. I'm a middle-aged white guy, after all; of course they know better than me, where my tolerances lie.
We will set aside the fact that I tried to order cuttlefish, only to be told that it was calamari. No. No, it really isn't. Never mind. I'll have the beef instead. You know, the one with the three chilli peppers next to it as a sign of hotness. "But I want it really spicy," quoth I. "I do mean that: really, really spicy." "He really does," quoth m'wife in support.
When it came? Well, it was I suppose not bland. Normal people, I was told, might find it hot. I do try to make it clear that I'm really not normal in this regard, but that's the thing. They just refuse to believe me. I'd sign them a waiver if they wanted, making it entirely clear that the heat of the dish was my responsibility, but I don't believe it would make any difference.
I can ask for hot sauces, of course, and I do - but that's not the same, it's not really what I want. I want the chilli cooked into the dish, taking its place among the other flavours. As the menu promises: I'm not asking for chilli in dishes where it doesn't belong, I'm always ordering the hottest thing on offer. In hopes, buffered by trying to ensure they really mean it. Which is what I should probably give up.
I did think about carrying around my own little bottle of my own hot sauce, but that would irritate everybody: me because there's a depth of pointlessness in paying someone else to cook me a meal and then trying to make it taste like I'd cooked it myself; and them because it's just plain rude. I'd be furious if someone flourished their own prepared sauce at my table, whether they were paying me or not. So no, won't be doing that. Will be living a life of eternal blandness instead, sans plead and sans expectation.
(Tho' Lucy promises to take me to her local Taiwanese restaurant, where the heat levels are said to be satisfactory to the point of excellence...)
Meanwhile, I am smoking pork on the barbecue and proving dough for sesame-seed buns, while I lay out my new plants on my ready vegetable bed, to make a winter garden full of brassicas and beans.