food. part II.

If the food and food service-related woes one was subjected to were limited to the time and selections of food being available (see part I), I feel that we, as a society, would be doing alright. Sadly, it only seems to worsen from there. On the upside, it does give me considerably more things to gripe and whine about, but on the downside, it just seems to indicate that we’re that much further from achieving societal perfection. Today’s rambling series of complaints isn’t directed and the owners of eateries, but the consumers and the seemingly endless barrage of food-related faux pas to issue forth from their masticating mouths.

The range of faux pas is assuredly limitless, but as is often a deciding factor here, laziness dictates that there are two main groups of faux pas. First, unforgivable ignorance and stupidity regarding the actual content of the food. Second, things to avoid saying to offend your dining companions.

Once again, I’d like to reiterate that I certainly don’t consider myself a food-snob, or a gourmand. A snob in general, well sure. Sadly, my culinary prowess are non-existent enough that the words “food snob” have not yet found their way onto my curriculum vitae. Perhaps, someday. Until then, there are always the heinous faux pas of others to give my confidence a little stroking. (In all honesty, some of these aren’t even so much dining faux pas as simple, “when you’re honestly that dense and can’t keep your remarks confined to an internal monologue, you might want to consider not leaving the house without wearing a ball gag.”)

Before I moved to London, I spent a few months working as a temporary secretary in a rather questionable office. It was hell, to put it mildly. I’ve experienced migraines more pleasurable than some of the days spent answering phones and filing papers in that office. Doesn’t sound too bad, does it? It was. Suffice to say, it was not an isolated occasion when I was asked by a colleague to page her “right away when her baby daddy called”. Somehow, and I say that with no small degree of surprise, the office had performed quite well over the previous fiscal year and the corporate executives were treating all the staff to a dinner out at a nice local steakhouse. After much whining about the choice of a steakhouse, and the required advanced ordering from a prix fixe menu, it was decided that all the employees who liked beef would order the rib eye steak option from the menu, and those who preferred chicken would order the filet mignon.

Fortunately, I had quit and had moved to other side of the ocean before the dinner actually took place. I am sad, though, that I never got to see how the filet mignon was received by the poultry lovers. Although, from an entire staff who seemed to spend every waking moment of their days chain smoking some sort of low grade tobacco that smelled suspiciously like repurposed tires, my guess is that their tastebuds were sufficiently dulled to subtle nuances such as that apparent when eating a cow or a chicken.

Pure ignorance always has a bit of charm to it, in the sense that it’s pretty self-detrimental and only the speaker suffers any sort of cringing discomfort. The social blunders at the dining table directed outwardly always seem a little bit more regrettable. Even worse is when they happen to hit an innocent bystander or third party who’s been dragged along against her will. One of the marks of a brilliant friend is that they put up with these abuses, not only from their friends, but from the people their friends happen to be involved with and introduce them to. Unfortunately, the latter of the following two incidents occurred to one of my best friends while she was still smarting from the former.

We were pleasantly ensconced into the corner table of a little Italian bistro. As Italian restaurants go, this went beyond being Italian in name only. Every staff member in the place was Italian to the point of only speaking a few very halting phrases in English. A very charming little place, despite her and I feeling quite useless and leaving our male companions to communicate with the wait staff. I have never, and probably will never again, feel more like a Mafia princess then during that dinner. I should mention that my friend had spent the previous days making considerable allowances for a number of regrettably embarrassing incidences and flaws of character of one of our fellow diners, in no small part to appease me. As fate would have it, he had chosen to don an unfortunate pair of cargo pants (complete with dangling zipper pulls on the pockets) that evening. While through the rose-coloured lenses of love, that may not seem like a grievous offence, I’ll now admit that it was a fashion misstep akin to tripping over an untied shoelace on the edge of deep gorge.

Our food is served, in the form of pretty sizeable pizzas. While they initially appear quite large, it’s worth mentioning that they are paper-thin and each costing as much as a decent handbag. Being known for my bird-like tendencies to pick my way through food, it’s no surprise that I eat about a third of mine and pass the remainder off to a seemingly bottomless pit that is masquerading as one of the men at our table. My friend, being much more financially conscious than I, eats her whole plate. Not a big deal, considering it is paper thin, as well as obscenely overpriced. At this point, cargo pants turns to her and upon seeing her clean plate announces to the table, “Wow! I’ve never seen a girl eat an entire pizza before!” He turns to the other people at the table continuing to chatter excitedly about how big the pizza was. She turns to me and gives me a look that would not only melt lead, but bring it comfortably to a temperature that would enable you to dip little pieces of fruit into it and call it fondue.

I interpreted the look to say to me, “if you can’t be attracted to guys who aren’t jackasses, than I’m making you join a convent”. Later in the night she told me that it was directed at him and actually more along the lines of, “Well, I’ve never seen a XX year old man wearing pants with decorative zippers on them before”.

Sadly, our encounters with pizza and those of the male persuasion were not to end there. One night, a few months ago, we found ourselves out in Camden, and I found myself shaking in my little red shoes at the prospect of introducing her to The Boy. The night had not exactly gotten off to a stellar start. The Boy, had made some well-meaning but not necessarily equally well-chosen introductory remarks pertaining to her nose ring and the contents of her blog. By the time the night was drawing to a close, I had graduated from shaking in my little red shoes to wondering if I could fit somewhat comfortably under one of the bar’s little red velvet sofas to hide indefinitely.

Heading back to the tube, we happened upon a little pizza and hot dog vendor. I was about to break into a little dance complete with jazz hands to celebrate something being open after dark, so she and I grabbed pizza slices, and he (being the flagrant Anti-Cheese-ite that he is) opted for a hot dog. We wander into the tube, and in my usual fashion I continue to tear small pieces off the crust and pick away at my pizza working my way towards the tip. At this point, The Boy surveys us: me picking away at my crust, and her holding onto my arm with one arm, her purse with the other. “Damn, you ate that pizza fast!,” he exclaims, “Were you starving? She’s barely started and yours is totally gone!” I can’t quite fathom how he was expecting that commentary to be received, but I’m guessing it was a far cry from how it actually panned out. (Logically, one would think he would have connected the dots and realized since he was also done eating and knowing that I’m an exceptionally slow eater, that she was just eating at normal human speed). Alas, from that point, all pretences of polite mingling were quite far away, left behind in Camden, perhaps. I’ll never forget the look of terror in The Boy’s eyes as he sensed something was amiss. I’m sure I’ve seen deer illuminated in the headlights of speeding transport trucks who look more optimistic of a positive outcome.

Suffice to say, I’ve got some more work to do getting those two to warm up to each other. I’m thinking over drinks, rather than food this time. One more misdirected commentary on her eating from a boy I’ve introduced her to, and she’s going to stick an apple in my month and I’ll find myself slowly spinning around over hot coals in the middle of a luau.

birthday.

Often times, restaurants will serve diners a little something following a dish to cleanse their palettes before the next course commences. The French lean towards vodka drizzled sorbet, while the Japanese prefer razor-thin slices of ginger. I wouldn’t presume to be so gauche as to launch into part 2 of Food without a little palette cleanser, strawberry blondie style. A simple, and horribly understated birthday note.

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We’re an unlikely pair, her and I. Had we met a few years earlier than we did (midway through university) we would have most certainly hated each other. We once took a hypothetical journey into our childhoods to imagine ourselves together as kids. The girl in pink and pearls and the girl with the pink hair and studded wristbands. She said maybe we would have been on the same baseball team. I said I didn’t play sports that involved teams or balls. I probably would have just gotten hit in the face with the bat, I said. No, she said, you probably would have gotten hit in the face by me.

Fortunately, the high school meeting and probable stuffing in the locker of one party was avoided. We became friends through the horrid unoriginality of academic group projects assigned alphabetically by surname. Saying we “became friends” suggests something more linear and organic than what actually happened. One snowy midwinter afternoon she opened her door to a knock and found one of her alphabetically assigned group members-cum-acquaintances standing on her doormat, an hour early. ‘Hi’, she said. ‘I’ve fallen out of love. Should I break up with my boyfriend today?’ I replied.

Two years later the boys have changed, we’ve both fallen, (often crashing into flaming heaps of wreckage) in and out of love, we’re no longer alphabetically assigned to each other, and yet somehow I can’t remember how things were without her.

She’s miraculously always there when I need someone to pick my head out of the toilet and relocate it to a bed. When traveling together, she’ll take my suitcases down from my shelf because I can’t reach them, sneak a beret into my bag for photo ops in Paris, and stand in one of the most glamorous train stations in the world running a lint brush over my clothes and holding a mirror while I readjust the part in my hair. She puts up with my romantic drama and the seemingly chronic bouts of foot-in-mouthisms hurled at her by the various men in my life. She listens to my confessions, celebrates my triumphs, and overlooks even the most grievous of my mistakes. When I get lost or lose my wallet in a foreign country she’ll book me hotels and train tickets over the phone. She’ll travel hundreds of miles to a city she hates to visit, knowing she’ll have to sleep in a tiny bed in a (seemingly impossibly) even tinier flat with a kitchen that she has to stock herself if she wants to eat. She’s met my flights, helped me moved, and walked me home when I’m unable to stand.

Never asking anything in return, her flaws are being too patient, too forgiving, too modest, and most unforgivably, too far away. Hearing her talk about herself, I don’t think she’s met the girl I, and everyone else, want so badly to introduce her to: the stunning, charming, savvy, sweet girl with the red hair. The lively girl who’s always up for striking a pose in a graffiti-filled alley or atop an oversized stone daschund. The girl who’s always there to wipe away your tears and make you laugh at the ridiculousness of your problems. The girl who cares more about people she’s just met than herself. The girl who falls in love hard and suffers enormously as a result. The girl whose sharp tongue and cunning witticisms deserve a much larger audience. The girl with chiseled cheekbones, porcelain skin and arched eyebrows enough to make any self-respecting film noire heroine slink abashedly into the smoky shadows.

The girl who deserves a birthday better than anyone can give her.

Here’s looking at you, kid.

food. part i.

Last week, I ate half a turkey sandwich before I realized it wasn't a thick slice of cheese on rye.

Now, I'm not a food snob, per se. It wasn't that long ago that someone had to teach me my Roquefort from my Gorgonzola, and my feta from my chevre. However, I do know that turkey should under no circumstances be mistaken for cheese. I consider this one of those little truisms commonly accepted as steadfast rules in the food world. Just as I know one should never order steak “well done” at a restaurant of any repute, I know that large cooked foul and milk that has been persuaded to curdle into a solid state should not have interchangeable tastes and textures.

Lately I’ve found myself thinking more than usual about food, eating habits, and national cuisines as I’ve been travelling and meeting new people and feebly trying to assimilate to various cultures by adopting the eating behaviours of the locals. It’s been a somewhat horrifying journey, with a full portion of complaining, a side order of sceptically poking at concoctions with forks, and maybe even a smattering or two of lying miserably in bed rubbing one’s tummy.

Upon arriving in New York City last summer, on one of my first weekends out on the town, I was told that I stood out a mile away as an out-of-towner. Before I had a chance to offer my feisty defence of my pronunciation of “about”, my unwillingness to do a little catwalk strut for a bouncer to get into a club, and the continual absence of a cigarette from one hand and a Blackberry from the other, I was told it was my plans to have dinner sometime between the hours of 5pm on Friday and 6am on Monday that marked me as if with a neon flashing sign as a non-Manhattanite. As it turns out, only tourists eat on the weekends in the Big Apple. On a weekday, dinner in Manhattan is a good steak. On the weekend, it’s a three-course affair: a cocktail at happy hour, a cigarette, and a sugar-free Altoid for dessert.

As our posse of locals returned to their on-upping each others threesome stories, my fellow out of towners and I had a quick discussion about this weekend-fasting revelation, the short synopsis reading something along the lines of, “Fuck that shit. Where was the falafel stand we passed ten minutes ago?” Apparently, as we soon discovered, if you’re comfortable being labelled an outsider, pariah, or social leper and choose to flagrantly disregard this unwritten uneating rule while the rest of the locals are out partying, the variety of food choices available is almost unlimited. The city truly never sleeps and one feels mildly obligated to stray from the conventional slice of pizza on the drunken walk home from whichever trendy area of the city you’ve been frequenting to whichever, most likely less trendy, area of the city in which you live.

After being pushed out of the comfortable borders of my conventional midnight pizza-eating, and finding a new ethnic cuisine each night to offer a climax to a night of drunken revelry, I suddenly fell on hard times upon relocating to London. Whereas New York is the city that never sleeps, London slathers on the cold cream, firmly pulls down its slumber mask and demands its beauty sleep, and considerable amounts of it at that. I’ve learned to eat while the sun is still up if I plan on eating at all. While Londoners most certainly eat just as regularly on the weekends as throughout the business week, they seem quite happy to shut down the entire city at approximately 6pm each day. Grocery stores, restaurants, cafes: all closed. Shopkeepers, restauranteurs, and waiters slam their doors and run for cover as soon as the sun dips out of view.

These early-closures have come as a harsh adjustment for me, mainly in terms of finding something to satiate me on inebriated journeys home in the early hours of the morning. Unfortunately, being rather domestically inept, I don’t really keep my flat stocked with food, of the snack variety or otherwise. Thus, one night last week, a late-night phone call to a darling friend went something like this:

Friend: “Have you been drinking?”
Me: “Maybe. Why do you ask?”
Friend: “Your voice shoots up an octave and a half after a few glasses of wine. And you’re jolly. Eerily jolly. What’s that noise in the background? Are you banging pots and jars together?”
Me: “I’m cooking whole wheat spaghettini, but I used the fridge socket for my hair straightener yesterday morning and forgot to plug the fridge back in and now my pesto looks off. Thoughts?”
Friend: “It’s 2 am.”
Me: “About the pesto.”
Friend: “If it smells manky, don’t eat it. Also, it’s 2am.”

I suppose the moral of that story is if you’re new to London, consider investing in some low-preparation snack foods to store around the house for late night cravings. Also, a power bar to maximize your useable electrical sockets so your hair and beauty aids don’t continually sabotage whatever work your major kitchen appliances are no doubt up to. Alternately, if you’re headed to New York and aren’t hell bent on blending in with the locals, I can direct you to the best all night sandwich café in Union Square that does things with capers that still make me wake up salivating.

To be continued.