Dolorous Dinner

So what's a horrible food experience do for you? Is it just a transient, in the moment type thing, where you just complain a bit, but there's no longer term effects afterwards? Does it get you so bubbling mad that you make a scene at the restaurant?

I've always had high standards for the food I eat. Well, more than just the taste of the food, but also the service with which the food was delivered. The dining experience is something quite special, quite other than just going out to eat. The ambience, the service and the taste all contribute to dinner, but there's also some extra element. There are people who think that if the taste is good then horrible service is tolerable. I quite disagree. I mean, it could be, in like a Soup Nazi situation, in which the horrible service was part of the actual experience.

But I've already talked about what the experience means to me in a past post. What I want to talk about is what feeling it ellicits in me when goes horribly wrong. Because it occurs to me it really does speak to my personality.

I don't make a scene. I don't let them know, the waitresses, owner, chef ... They're none-the-wiser to my immense displeasure. But I do insidiously let out my feelings of hatred... I don't leave a tip, or at least strongly suggest my family not to. I sit there and complain and complain and complain. In the car trip later I *really* let loose.

I remember vividly a dinner I had in a resturant in Cooma, when I had to wait 45 minutes for a simple pasta and tasted of rubber. That was 14yrs old. I'm 19 now and the same thing happened last night. A Thai restaurant in Belconnen, right by Gininderra Lake, if you ever go anywhere near there, I suggest you avoid the Thai restaurant with the horrible gazebo type entrance. If I knew it's name I'd publically shame it.

Thai food holds a very special place in my heart. There is a very specific set of flavours that separates Thai food from any other asian food. So when we get 4 dishes, all bland, none of it chilli, there is something seriously wrong.

Larb
Meant to be a refeshing, zesty salad, this was essentially flavourly, overcooked, boiled mince pork. When I asked for a wedge of lemon so that I could at least attempt to salvage the meal, I got 3 slices (like you'd get on a drink), which my father dilligently tried to utilise. I had to get the wedge and the waiter gave me a wtf-look. Then took 10 mintues and told me he wasn't sure if he could... YOU'RE A THAI RESTAURANT AND YOU HAVE NO LEMON???

Squid in Chilli and Ginger sauce
The squid was well cooked. That's all that can be said. The flavours offered were pretty much a Chinese stir-fry and not a very good one at that. Bland, tasteless, watery.

Beef in Lemon Grass and Chilli
No chilli, no lemon crass. Just beef slices cooked in some stir-fry style with no taste. Again. Very little difference between this one and the Squid.

Green Chicken Curry
Too much coconut milk, no curry. Watery. Overcooked chicken.

Saffron Rice
WASN'T SAFFRON RICE. It was boiled rice + colouring. Like dude, WTF.

It's funny, ever since I've moved out and starting cooking for myself and watching all these pseudo-cooking shows, like Hell's Kitchen, Master Chef, more Iron Chef etc, I've really homed in on taste and overcooked meat/vegies. Something I never noticed before outside the strength of the taste. My focus was on service, but now it's expanded from service to tastes to the technique.

And the service was terrible. Long wait, too many unhelpful people ... Like when we ordered more Saffron Rice I wanted to change my order to Coconut rice, which theoretically would be actual Coconut rice. I didn't want another lot of fake rice. The waiter I asked was like "oh, it's already been ordered".

???

You can't stop an order? I mean obviously if it were some major meal I could understand. But RICE? Rice isn't meant to be cooked to order. And even if you stopped it, it'd be what? $4 you'll have wasted. Big-fucking-whoop. Then again, a restaurant that crap I wouldn't be surprised if they needed all the money they could get, considering the horrible food.

I should done what I said to my parents, which was I'd just pay for the extra, new rice, take the Saffron Rice and dump it on the floor. That would've given me satisfaction.

So I come home, and I still feel agitated. I feel uneasy, like I let them off too easy or that I ought to do something about it. And you'd think that it would make me want to cook professional, 'cause I think I could do a good job. That's how I feel when I watch a horrible play/movie/TV show or read something disgusting. Most things of which I am most judgemental I feel like I can do better in than everyone else in the world.

With cooking it's different. It's not what I want. What I want to be is a food critic. I want to build up some epic portfolio, so much that restaurants get scared when I walk in, fearing my silver tongue and impeccable palette. When I call, they're willing to cancel on even their favourite customers to make me room. Once I've accumulated that power, I would want to use it to absolutely destroy restaurants that are horrible.

It's really the only field in which I want to make the world "better". It's not enough just to do better than they do, I want to eradicate them from the world, to make it better. It always strikes me as odd that people actually think that "there'll always be bad restaurants" or "once you get rid of the bad ones you'll just up your standards and start roasting more", which is just a bizarre logic. Of course that's not the case. Good food is good food and bad food is bad food - there's relativity or personal standards.

And even if it were, they provide no argument for WHY we should be less harsh just because we would never find the perfect set of restaurants. Assuming that it's true, impossibility should never deter us from trying. And if people think they can argue that then they're delusional.