BS: Your worst restaurant experience

Subject: RE: BS: Your worst restaurant experience
From: Helen
Date: 15 Mar 25 - 01:40 PM

Avocado "pears" are only called that because of their shape, which resembles a pear, MaJoC.

They taste nothing like pears and have a completely different texture and are mostly used for savoury dishes but some people sneak them in when making ice cream or cakes as a creamy substitute.

Don't go all pear-shaped on eating avocados. LOL

My recommendation for a first tasting would be guacamole with a Mexican dish.

Subject: RE: BS: Your worst restaurant experience
From: BrooklynJay
Date: 15 Mar 25 - 02:15 PM

Don't forget - avocados are also known as Alligator Pears.

Groucho Marx mentions them to Margaret Dumont in the 1929 film The Cocoanuts. Probably the first time I ever heard the term.


Jay

Subject: RE: BS: Your worst restaurant experience
From: Helen
Date: 15 Mar 25 - 03:16 PM

And FWIW, I tend to not eat pears. They have to be ripe and not unripe and hard for me to eat them. I have had them in a couple of recipes like poached pears or pear tarte tatin. I don't mind them cooked but I don't particularly like them raw. The taste of raw pear is a bit "why bother?" for me.

Then again, I don't eat apples raw either. They seem to upset my digestion a bit. I like them cooked: apple crumble, apple pie, apple turnover, etc.

I love bananas!! Bananas and avocados rule!! Yay!!

Subject: RE: BS: Your worst restaurant experience
From: JennieG
Date: 15 Mar 25 - 07:58 PM

A bad restaurant experience:

Many many years ago the Scottish country dance group to which I belonged had their "end-of-year-Christmas night out" at a restaurant which had been in business for many years. As is my wont I bypassed the entree - 'appetiser' for the non-Ozzies - and ordered a main course, grilled salmon fillet with asparagus and I forget what else. After so many years I can't recall what I ordered for dessert. Many of the group went for three courses. We placed our orders, and settled in for a chat while we waited.

Entrees were duly delivered for those who had ordered them, and main courses started to appear. Mine did not. Entrees were cleared away, mains were being cleared, and desserts were starting to appear. My main was still nowhere to be seen, despite asking various wait staff. Eventually a staff member appeared and started in on the excuses.....staff off sick, didn't show for shifts, etc. "That's not my problem", I said. "I have ordered food and it has not been delivered. How hard can it be?" (I'm not usually rude to staff which I why I remembered what was said, but by then I was getting quite annoyed.) Eventually my salmon appeared, just as most of the others were finishing their desserts. My dessert (for which I was not charged) eventually appeared; the restaurant was clearing out by then.

One of my companions asked was it worth the wait......no, I said. It was nice, there was nothing wrong with the food, but it wasn't worth such a long wait.

Subject: RE: BS: Your worst restaurant experience
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 Mar 25 - 11:19 AM

I can't count the times I've been out with a group and one or two meals didn't appear and didn't appear, only to either never arrive or be so late everyone else was leaving. The usual table response is "they had to go kill the cow" or "catch the fish." That typically happened at places I never return to.

I am remembering a really nice meal times two, though. My son and I went up to the favorite Mexican restaurant (mentioned above) for lunch and were seated in a small enclosed porch area. A few minutes after we were served a young man (I'd guess late 20s) was seated a dozen feet away. We had a view of his profile; he was in military fatigues (light camouflage), a really short haircut, a hearing aid behind each ear. We continued to eat and talk, he placed his order, and when it arrived he arranged the parts of the meal on the table like it was a ritual, and placed a bottle of Aleve (naproxen - a painkiller) on the table next to his water glass. He clearly was enjoying every bit of his lunch. Since that restaurant is one of my favorites I presumed it was also a favorite of his, but this was more than just lunch, it was a ceremonial meal by someone who was back from a rough time. When we walked up to the cashier in the next room I told the her I wanted to pay for that other lunch, hoping the gift would add one more bit of pleasure to his afternoon. They were excited to comply, and I asked if they'd wait to tell him after we left. During our meal I had quietly called my son's attention to the other diner (the hearing aids, the pain medication) so he knew what I was doing. Not just a gift, I hope I was setting a good example.

Subject: RE: BS: Your worst restaurant experience
From: Mr Red
Date: 16 Mar 25 - 02:03 PM

cilantro gene? - from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriander

Due to variations in the gene OR6A2, some people perceive it to have a soap-like taste, or even a pungent or rotten taste.

Some people have the Alliumphobis gene.

Subject: RE: BS: Your worst restaurant experience
From: JennieG
Date: 16 Mar 25 - 05:39 PM

Ozzie cats don't react to catnip/catmint, either. It seems to be a hemispherical thing.

Subject: RE: BS: Your worst restaurant experience
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 16 Mar 25 - 08:51 PM

Pizza marinara in Buxton, Derbyshire, some years ago. Well it is a bit far from the sea, but the prawns (shrimps) on the pizza had a disgusting smell about them. I picked one off with my fork, sniffed it and reeled backwards. Husband had already started eating his, but then I suggested he tried sniffing the prawns too - same effect! So we called the waitress and told her: she went to speak to the chef; came back to tell us “Chef says they’re fresh”, to which I said, “Maybe they were, two weeks ago”.
In the end, the pizzas were removed and we were offered another choice off the menu, which we half-heartedly accepted, and lived to tell the tale.

Subject: RE: BS: Your worst restaurant experience
From: Pappy Fiddle
Date: 17 Mar 25 - 12:07 AM

You lived to tell the tale; so did I. This was a Mexican restaurant and the menu said something like Camarones asados en mantequilla, which sounded to me like Shrimp Scampi. When it came, the shrimp tasted like... well, what I imagine a kitchen sponge would taste like altho I've never chawed on one.

Still, it didn't have the romance of when I lived in Santiago Isquintla. There was a street vendor who came around with a little cart yelling "TAMALES DE CAMARON!!" so loud it would have rattled the windows if they had glass. I was never stupid enough to get one...

We went to a baseball game and he came into the stands yelling his thing. The guy sitting in front of me bought one to go with his Pepsi. A tamale is a thing like a corn dog. This would be one with shrimp in the middle. So this guy bites the end off it, and out pops the head of this single HUGE shrimp, more like a lobster! with little beady eyes, and two antennae about 20 inches long flipping out! I guess the critter hadn't even been gutted or cleaned at all.

But the story doesn't end there. At this night game, being in a tropical climate, there were bugs. They were of course attracted to the field lights, circling around up there like a live fog. Well, in this place, there is a beetle which we would occasionally see dead in the gutter or wherever; grossest thing you ever saw - stark black, about 4-5 inches long, with a pair of pinchers or arms sticking out the front end that looked for all the world like a pair of woman's naked legs, if she was a very black African. And one of these lovely insects tried to ram his way right into the intensely hot bright light, and either dazed or fried, came spiralling down and plopped right in the guy's paper cup of Pepsi.

Guy's name? Suertisimo

Subject: RE: BS: Your worst restaurant experience
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Mar 25 - 12:23 AM

Oh, my! Now that's an eating adventure! And good call on the shrimp on the pizza!

Subject: RE: BS: Your worst restaurant experience
From: Mr Red
Date: 18 Mar 25 - 05:36 AM

ever wondered what that distinctive smell is about fish?

Rotting flesh, I am told.

Subject: RE: BS: Your worst restaurant experience
From: Mrrzy
Date: 19 Mar 25 - 11:53 AM

Nope, no cilantto-loving gene.