Restaurant wrongings

You will be wronged by a restaurant at some point in your life. They will cheat on you, lie to you, and you will find out, but not before it’s too late. I’m sorry, but that’s life. You will get over-charged and under-served, and told that something is sugar-free, low-fat, and has “subtle tones of vanilla.” We can only hope that the “wronging” will not extend to anaphylactic shock due to a nut allergy.

But there are a few things that restaurants seem to do over and over, the world over. That’s a lot of over. You may think you’re just a customer, a bit o’ plankton with the restaurants as the whale, but that’s not a bad thing. Because they need you. You’ve got your place on the food food chain, you see. The food² chain. And despite this, they still somehow find a way to piss me off, for all the small reasons.

1. Once you’ve gotten the food you’ve ordered, you’re dead to your server. In fact, I’d be more content if they actually came up and said “you’re dead to me.” It would eliminate the guessing game. Do they like me? Do they not like me? Are they faking it for a better tip? If so, are they from the west coast? In any case, they disappear exactly when you’re looking to get your bill and get the hell out of there.

2. The wait staff doesn’t even know what’s on their menu. I don’t need to know if your virgin olive oil was produced by actual virgins, but some semblance of food knowledge would be nice. Soup du jour? A la mode? If you don’t know what the physical words on your menu mean, then any monetary tip from me will be a la mode of non-existence, tous les jours.

3. If something’s missing from your plate that was listed on the menu, they act like it’s your fault. Because you’re probably hiding that red onion chutney in the lining of your jacket. Idiots. You could hide tater tots and Hot Pockets in your jacket, but if you already had those you wouldn’t be in the restaurant, would you? And then you worry that they’re mocking you to the other servers, even though they’re the ones that screwed up? Well, they are. You can’t win; get used to it.

4. “Let me tell you how our menu works.” Need I say more? Ok, I will. No, wait, I won’t.

4a. Argh…fine. Does your menu come with batteries? Is that why your hostess is so chipper at her stand? I utilize my reading skills, which were put upon me largely in the first grade with plenty of Berenstain Bear-based reinforcement, to choose food I would like to put in my mouth. After overcoming that incredible hurdle, everything else seems pretty simple, no?

5. Bread & butter: The butter’s ice cold, rock hard, and unsalted, and the bread is a cold chunk that you can then use to throw back at your server, getting her to bring you some of the warm stuff. I’ve got many a steam burn from putting trays of bread into a convection oven for a scant two minutes. And I’ve learned to pull butter and let it sit at room temp before serving. It’s not a hard thing to do. So it’s irritating when you get a brick of yellow stuff that you can’t get into your mouth in smooth fashion. Now what? Do you put an un-spreadable chunk of the stuff on your bread, and eat it in one bite? Do you cradle it in your hand and speak softly to it until it warms up? No, you throw it, ninja-star-like, at the next table over and steal some cutlery during the ensuing chaos. Doesn’t it piss you off that they don’t facilitate an easier way for you to fill up on cheap, free carbs before they arrive with the food that you’ve paid for? Well, it pisses me off.

Ironically, man and restaurant seem to coexist more peacefully on the lower rungs of the food² chain. For instance, go through a Taco Bell drive-thru and buy your tacos. Then park, go inside, and say that they forgot something, anything on your order; you’ll probably get it. Try hanging around a donut shop when they’re about to close, you’ll probably be able to get yourself a couple dozen of whatever’s left, without having to perform any immoral acts in the parking lot.

Customers are certainly not without their faults, though. A request of “Can I have scallops instead of french fries on my steak?” and I’ll just assume that you have no concept of worth, and that you were probably that over-privileged single child that didn’t need to play nice in the sandbox because they had their own sandbox, complete with Zen gardener.

Scary part? I had my own sandbox. It’s where I could go to escape the culinary atrocities that occurred on a regular basis in my kitchen growing up. So following soon will be the horrors perpetuated by customers, so as not to show favoritism. For in the world of restaurants, there are no true angels.

Dinner Conversation

"We sat at the bar,

Eating bread from Forfar,

And she said 'And what are you doing here?'”

Questioning authority delegates someone as the author. So it is to you I write as the author, allowing you to question. You can take it as fact or fiction. Take it with Billy Joel in mind; take it as a bagel with not enough cream cheese, spread too thin.

It started with the bread; it culminated with the starters. I was interrupted in the middle of eating pork belly. That’s not right. Pork belly is a pinnacle of food. It parties in the food halls of Valhalla, has a rightful throne atop Mt. Food Olympus. I would wrap myself in a blanket of it, to provide protection and warmth. If Luke could choose pork belly or Tauntaun belly to keep him alive on Hoth, you bet your ass he’d choose pork belly.

The room was already stifling, something that you could write off as the charm of a centuries-old farmhouse, but it was only at that moment that I began to actually realize it. A hot dining room can come off as a burden that each diner feels is theirs alone to shoulder. Do you debase the austerity of luxurious fine dining by removing your blazer? Throw couth out the window by rolling up your sleeves? Verbal fisticuffs were close at hand, but damnit, my cufflinks were cool, and given to me by someone I love very much.

Downhill skiing requires an athletic stance; so does a terrorist attack. Somewhere in between the two, fork tines plunged into the remnants of scallops and pork belly came the questioning of not only my lifestyle, but my existence at this place, in this time. Time for that athletic stance; and at the dinner table no less. The uniquities of international life give me single note coins, much better chocolate bars, and better access to the BBC. I’ve learned to love where I am, even if I’m yet to fully love myself. I’ve learned to not extend that love to others, though. Some people out there I neither love nor hate. I nothing them.

The way conversation can swirl like bad tye-dye is something that can bring joy or pain to a meal, where food and verse exist like infused oil atop a blended soup. They’ll never fully mix, but they can certainly compliment each other and work in harmony if done correctly.

I was thinking this as indeed, a soup was placed in front of me. Lightly spiced curry soup with a mint oil garnish. What struck me was not how the flavors melded in the cup, but was in fact my own appreciation for get only a demitasse cup of it. You see, you can’t throw a demitasse cup of soup in someone’s face. Fury doesn’t dissipate well in 1 ½ fluid ounces.

I can only pray that the lying, cheating, and stealing I’ve perpetrated throughout the years is somewhat curtailed by the penance of suffering through this poorly scripted dinner scene. I want to believe that pork products could indeed solve the majority of problems, when in fact history may prove they have only perpetuated them.

So, as the pork disappeared from the table, so did the tension. Entrees brought highland beef filet with braised cheeks, a cooled room and lowered sleeves. Cufflinks shone in the rise and fall of glinting cutlery, reminding me of those who were in my camp, and of those who could exist in the food badlands, alongside mango salsa and raspberry vinaigrette.

Morty

Maine Coon cats are voracious eaters, which you’d think goes against the culinary traits of drama-queen felines. Instead of “I’ll just have a salad,” Maine Coons need to mercilessly shred any meat put in front of them, and then typically submerge it in their water bowl, effectively killing and drowning their tasty morsels. It’s awesome. We had one named Max that also had a thang for the spice. I remember giving him some spicy shrimp, and the boy just licked all the hot sauce off, and left the shrimp. Max also had a penchant for that pressed deli-sliced turkey, but I won’t hold that against him. Sometimes they get accustomed to whatever faux foods that their feeder (my mother) gives them.

Can you pluralize a superlative like “best?” Can there be many “best” things about someone you love? Morty’s got several best things about him. The thump above your head when you walked into the basement, which was him coming off of some furniture he wasn’t supposed to be on in the first place and down to meet you. His, along with Rudy’s, downright refusal to eat from their bowls if either one of them was less than full. (Here’s another “best”: my mother’s frighteningly manic dedication to keeping their bowls full. They would literally starve themselves, not eating for days, if these food requirements weren’t held up.) The way Morty’d be more than happy to sleep on your legs at night, but if you tried to move, he’d just get pissed and lay into you with his claws. You’ve got to appreciate love that’s almost entirely on someone else’s rules.

Morty passed away this morning in the waiting room of the vets. Apparently he had an inoperable mass in his stomach that spread faster than expected, and my mom watched him have a seizure and die in front of her before anything could be done. I know I always try to be upbeat, if not really really sarcastic on here, and I also try to include food, because it’s something I love. I also know this one’ll come off rough, unkempt, and very poorly structured, but death’s no time to make things neat. Because I love food, but I also love Morty. He couldn’t kill a mouse worth a damn, but that’s ok. He had soul without being a soldier. He was also a rock star cat, being the center of attention at pretty much all our family gatherings, and had pretty much edged me out in terms of offspring priority. I’m still coming to grips with that one. In any case, close to midnight on a Friday night in the Scottish Highlands, I’m missing my cat.

Sales Pitch

Hey there, we’re GETTO. We’re radically different from other wood pellet suppliers. How, do you ask? Well, we do sell wood pellets, wood pellet burners, wood pellet boilers, wood pellet bathrobes, wood pellet tampons, even wood pellet models of wood pellets. Just like the other wood pellet guy. So how are we different?

Our costs are low. Real low. Practically nonexistent. Like the sketchy mattress guy in town, our costs are less, so we sell for less. That’s right. Don’t believe me?

How about this: we don’t pay our employees, so we’re able to pass the savings right on to you. Who says slave labor is no longer in vogue? GETTO is the ONLY U.K. wood pellet supplier that offers a feudal system benefits package to all its employees. Mmm….you like hard tack, don’t you? We do!

And we don’t have a web site, which means we can pass those savings right on to you. The internet’s just a phase, anyways. .com, .net, .org, .whogivesashit? We don’t!

We don’t even have an office. That’s right…SAVINGS. Pour vous. But wait, there’s more….

At any given time, our employees only have three working tires on their car. And by not getting that fourth tire? Oh yes, that just means more savings for you. But it also means we’re environmentally friendly, because our cars don’t go anywhere. We’re not bothered by gas prices, or wars for oil; nope, we’re all about you. Now see if your regular wood pellet guy is that focused.

We won’t bug you with annoying phone calls….we don’t have a phone. Call us: we’ll be happy to give you a number to the local pub, where you can usually find one of us. During normal business hours, of course. Aw, what the hell…we’ll be there day AND night, just to serve you better.

We don’t have any of that annoying paperwork that usually comes with construction work. We hate documents of any sort; for our workers, our certifications, anything. Let’s face it: you don’t want ‘em, we don’t have ‘em, and paper cuts suck. Besides, we’re trying to save the earth, people!

We don’t have tacky stickers guaranteeing safety, regulations, and quality, nothing to gunk up your front window and affect property value. We’re not just looking out for you; we’re looking out for your future.

What we CAN promise you is that we’ll give you the best prices in town. Because we don’t really want that fourth tire. Why ruin a good thing? In fact, if we ever do make enough for that fourth tire, we’ll give it to you, no questions asked. Throw your baby in it, spank his ass, and call him Michelin! Where else will you find a deal like that?

And depending on where you live, you may even get service! If you do, consider yourself lucky, because you are. It’s a pretty good chance no one else is getting it.

If you sign up now for our Compromise Service, you’ll get just that: the promise of com. Or at least the promise of something. As in: we promise to give you something, sometime. It could be a wood pellet burner; it could be herpes. But it will be SOMETHING. It may even be one undocumented person from a country definitely not of your choosing, but probably adapted to look vaguely local. If you happen to have a car on cinder blocks in your front yard, then he may already be there. GETTO cars and installers blend in perfectly with their surroundings.

Don’t have enough money for GETTO products? That’s fine: you can have some of ours! To show our dedication to you, we’ll give you one of our personal credit cards. With PIN! Treat yourself to a nice dinner. Go buy that really freaky porn that you’ve always wanted. Rent a hotel room to eat your food and watch your porn. No one will know. It’ll be your little secret with GETTO. We’ll be pals.

So call or email us today. Or just keep an eye out for a three-wheeled car. The guy inside, however unsightly and unwashed he may appear, could be your ticket to a whole new lifestyle.

GETTO: Because if you don’t GETT it, all you’ve got is O.

Not Poodle

My eyes passed over an ad that said “This isn’t just coffee. This is Starbucks.” This isn’t just a headache. It’s a tumor. This isn’t just one garden gnome. It’s angry garden gnome mob. And they’re coming after you, Starbucks.

The death of the independent coffee shop gives me a feeling in my gut that, up until now, was reserved for the intestine-purging, extreme fiber power of Kashi Go Lean. They’ve managed to turn a Starbucks barista into an oxymoron. They’re not baristas. They don’t make your coffee. They’re slaves to the Terminator-esque machines in the back that make it for you. The first “self-aware” machines will be the ones that know you like a double half-caff, low-fat, no whip mocha, with a twist of lemon. And then they will taunt you, giving you ¾-caff, just to piss you off.

We’re losing the ability to think with our stomachs. It’s coming to be that we’ve got artificial stomachs thinking for us. And that’s liable to hit us where it hurts.

And then we’ve got this, something that perhaps only artificial stomachs can, uh, stomach: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy2nqEfSx3Q

We’ll ignore the “sausage with a pen” bit; it’s too easy a target.

For those of you who don’t know, a doner kebab is essentially a hot dog in concept, but styled a bit more coherently, and with less mystery. Strips of meat (typically lamb), are molded together in a cylinder-like fashion, then skewered and roasted slowly. A good kebab comes with a garlicky yogurt sauce, some sliced raw onion, lettuce, and sometimes tomato, in a pita. Often they get cut using a slicer that is somewhat akin to a Flobie with a bucket-end. It shaves the twirling, skewered meat better than an adult film stylist, and for a few more pounds, the kebab guy will outfit your poodle with some racing stripes.

Let me be clear, though….pot noodle is not poodle. Ha. Pot noodle only succeeds in giving you more sodium, faster. I can only shake my head in sadness for Tony, at the undermining of his apparently delicious, if fictional, kebab. But I would assume that everything is delicious at 3am, when you’re back from the club, and you’ve sweated through your chiffon/polyester blend leisure suit. The fictional aspect of this product comes when you try to decipher what you’re supposed to taste. Now this is the first time I saw an ad, and as a direct result bought the product. I even followed the directions on how to make it. But that was about where the reality of the food ended; with the water. I appreciate water, I understand it, I know what exists within it, and what it does. I can’t say any of these things about this pot noodle, though. I just know that it contained some meat-like bits of flak (or flak-like bits of meat….scary how interchangeable they are), and some collection of noodle-like objects that came across more as the internal organs of a flour-based life form. All gussied up with a touch of curry powder, and it’s supposed to be doner kebab? That’s your in? Curry powder? You think a touch of spice is going to completely awesome-ize your food? (I’m looking at you, caraway. Carrot soup was doing fine before you came along; it even had ginger to fool around with, if it felt saucy. But you ruined it, and for what?)

Here’s what you do. Do a blind taste test of all the different flavored anything (potato chips, instant noodle, even sodas), and try to figure out what flavor you think they are, versus what they’re supposed to be. Do we really need chips that taste like Peking pork ribs? Or roast chicken and thyme even? When you’re eating instant noodles, why are dreaming of a doner kebab? That’s very naughty of you, mentally cheating on your food like that. If you want the doner kebab, tell the noodles it’s over, and go get your kebab. As long as you’re honest with you food, it’ll understand. But don’t come crying to me when your tofu dog tastes like tofu instead of dog. When you cheat your food, you cheat yourself. (Insert “The more you know” rainbow here.)

The problem is that we’re too quick to develop false food friends. The crinkle of packaged food should, but rarely does, give a sense of dread in people who trust the personified, smiling Chips Ahoy cookie (Chips Ahoy? Is he a pirate cookie?), or the script writing that makes you think that the very, very, very old Mr. Kellogg is still signing his boxes, fighting through some crazy bouts of carpal tunnel syndrome with regular amounts of heroin and hookers. Come on, you know he did it. There’s only so much you can do in Battle Creek Michigan. And what do I have to keep my interest piqued after liquid kebab? A second tub of pot noodle, this one telling me that I’m a Bombay bad boy. Or maybe that it’s a Bombay bad boy, which gives me only a tinge of concern about homosexual tendencies in my personal food world when I dive into it. The taste profile of that was so unremarkable, I won't even go into it here. In any case, it’s not nearly tasty enough to make me switch full-time, to boys or noodles. What it did tell me, though, is this: I’ve got a moustache-turn-kebab trimmer. If Andrew wants a kebab at 3 am, then that’s what Andrew will get. No more noodle nonsense.

Sportin' a Woody

Hey there, I’m Andrew. I’m in alternative energy. Hell, I am an alternative energy. I could say that I sell wood fuel systems, but such a long drawn out title, along with the word “sell,” well it makes me feel like I should be wearing a plaid suit, and giving the wink-and-a-gun smile. While in Glasgow to see a client a few weeks back, someone tried to get my attention to donate money. Save the children, save the whales, stop overpopulation by feeding the children to the whales…I wasn’t sure. But to get out of it, I told her I was on my way to a meeting to “save the world.” If anything, it made her smile.

I was kind of serious, though. What I’m doing here is trying to change the way we look at energy. We’re on the cusp of having wireless electricity. Our air is already charged with countless radio waves, satellite beams, and countless other invisible threads of energy. Like my food, I wanted to deal with something tangible, real, that people could see with their eyes, feel with their hands, and hopefully understand the real impact on their society, without any fru-fru gimmicks, be it curly parsley sprig, fried leek garnishes, or “paint” on the plate. I know I’m supposed to talk about wood fuels here, maintain some linear-style writing, but seriously….who wants “paint” anything on their plate? It looks like a skid mark, doesn’t add flavor, and at best just looks like your dishwasher is broken.

Alternative energy though? When will it no longer become alternative? I understand that most people are content with writing a check to NStar, then waiting it out, grumbling when they hear about oil and gas prices rising, but for the most part remaining on their collective asses, without thinking about the other options out there. But when a Rhode Island-sized chunk of ice breaks from the Arctic shelf (sadly, the actual Rhode Island is still very much attached), you have to wonder what kind of profound steps we’ll all have to take, and more to the point, what steps we should take on our own.

It’s up to you to do something about it. It’s rare that someone just stumbles onto this blog…you’ve got to know what you’re looking for, and what you’re in for, when you come to this darkened page of random coolness. As such, I’ll retain the faith that my readers have eco-concerns coursing through their veins in the way that I do. Why else would you keep coming back to my writing if it weren’t for some belief that we share a passion or two?

Frankly, I like rooting for the underdog in this case, that “crazy, alternative” form of heating. I like being able to convince people that wood pellet burners can give you hot air AND hot water; that it won’t make your boiler room hotter than a Swedish sauna, complete with Swedes. It’s a beautiful thing, in fact. We’re streamlining wood heat. The same kind of wood heat that people use to get their sexy on, sitting on a polar bear skin rug, sipping their ’84 Haut Brion. But instead of a roaring log fire, we use a closed system of roaring wood pellets. A good number of us can probably attribute our conceptions to wood heat, then; isn’t it about time we gave it a chance? And you can even keep your crackling logs and polar bear rug. Give me the wine, though…it’s fantastic. What we use is something that takes all the leftover wood, the stuff that falls on floors, gets into corners, and is found alongside discarded peanut shells on either really cool or really sketchy bars, and turn it into energy.

Wood pellets look like a more approachable version of what your rabbit would leave behind after going house on a carrot or three. The “official” size is somewhere between 6 and 8mm in length (Andrew, you mean 7mm then. Yes I do. I just love when people try to generalize like that,) with almost no moisture content. They’re compressed sawdust, hopefully no bark, and held together only by their natural resin, and God’s will. But mostly resin. Sometimes they’re scraped together from the by-product of common wood production; everything that’s left over after the majestic 2 X 4’s are cut and put into play. They are, in terms of the movie Twins, the Danny DeVito of wood production. Or, at least, they were.

Now, they’ve gained some confidence on the playground of fuel sources. In both scientific and haberdashery terms, they beat the pants off oil, gas, and coal. They’re much more fun to play with, (though who doesn’t like rolling in a good vat of natural gas?) they’re the least environmentally hazardous, and they are the most easily replenish-able. They are also carbon neutral, as any emissions from burning are equal to those given off through the natural decomposition of the wood. Huge factories are producing wood pellets at an astonishing rate. They’re safe, and best of all, efficient. Wood pellets burn at 94% on a bad day, and can burn at nearly 98% on a good day. By comparison, nuclear power? Yeah, it’s running at an all-time high of 6%. SIX FREAKING PERCENT. They’d be better off giving fuel rods to the kids to wave around at raves than use them to power our cities. The only good thing to come from nuclear power is the cool radioactive symbol, in my opinion.

What that 98% means is that there’s almost no left-over. A tad of ash, perhaps, maybe a Tablespoon a week, but that stuff is pure calcium, which spells awesomeness for your garden when used as fertilizer. Or, in culinary terms, boil it in some water, and make yourself some lye to use in such awesome recipes as Cretan donuts. I’ll send you the recipe.

So I’ve (we, I should say, as there’s also a Finn, 2 Hungarians both named Zoltan, and a ruddy English plumber…not the opening line for a joke, just a serious list of characters) been installing one at this hotel, this quaint little place where they only get 15 meters of rain a year. Go ahead, figure that out in inches. Yep, exactly. That much rain. It’s absurd. And I like the rain. My hair likes the rain; it gets all curly and sexy. But waking up in that kind of weather, day after day, makes you yearn for the chance to Google “ark building.”
I’ve learned several things from the past months of time up there, and I’ll take a second to share them with you:

1. Rocks are like snowflakes. Dirty, heavy, painful snowflakes.
2. Metric is SO much easier than Imperial. Cooking school taught me that, but this confirms it.
3. Hungarians quickly tire of you waving food at them, asking them if they’re “Hungry?”
4. Hungarians never tire of making jokes about the sexual relations of Scots and sheep.
5. As an American, I’m deemed instantly intelligent by everyone, now that Obama’s been elected.
6. If, while digging, you uncover shiny liquid that easily ignites, it’s probably not groundwater.
7. Dealing with the occurrence of #6 helps with #5. A lot.

So I’ll keep you informed of my current life in wood pellets and wood pellet accessories. For all your timber burning needs. Stay tuned.