Mock me if you will but I like foods that are kinda plain. To me, a hamburger is meat, bun, ketchup and maybe some onions — no cheese, no lettuce, no tomato, no chili, no mustard, no dressing, no nothing extra. Baked potato? Butter and sometimes not even that. Hot dog? Mustard only. Pizza? Cheese is fine. Maybe some mushrooms and/or meatballs.
You would not believe the condescending sneers you sometimes get from people who think there's something wrong with you as a human being if you don't like all sorts of excess, experimental things on your dinner. Or the number of waiters and waitresses who think you can't possibly mean that you want the chicken without the chutney-mango guacamole smeared all over it.
Actually, my servers have gotten better about this since I learned to make a funny issue out of these things when I order. Nowadays if you eat with me, you're likely to hear something like this…
ME: I would like the pulled pork sandwich but without the cole slaw.
SERVER PERSON: You don't want any cole slaw on the sandwich?
ME: I don't want any cole slaw on the plate. I don't want any cole slaw on the table. I don't want any cole slaw in the restaurant. You see those people at the next table eating cole slaw? Go take it away from them and tell the manager to remove it from the menu. If you can do something about banning it from this state, I'd be so appreciative, I might even tip.
Understand that I don't expect them to actually remove cole slaw from the menu or the state, though either would be nice. I just say stuff like that because I want them to remember that the large guy at table 8 really, really doesn't want cole slaw. About 90% of the time, this works whereas when I used to merely specify "no cole slaw," I'd almost always wind up with cole slaw…and a server who'd swear on some blood relative's life I said no such thing.
It's a problem I have with most restaurant meals, especially in new eateries. Between my food preferences and my food allergies, I'm always cross-examining the waitress and asking that they leave something out. Sometimes, they can't.
I long ago gave up ordering tuna fish sandwiches in restaurants because to me, a tuna fish sandwich is tuna, mayo or Miracle Whip, two slices of some non-exotic bread…and nothing else. Most places will leave off the tomato, lettuce, arugula, alfalfa sprouts, vinegarette dressing, cole slaw, etc. that their sandwich maker likes to heap onto the bread but they can't do much about what's already mixed into their tuna salad: Celery, chopped olives, Dijon mustard, onion, dill, cottage cheese, chopped avocado and so on.
The add-ins were not the problem. If they want to do that to perfectly good tuna fish, that's their right. My problem was the vast number of times I'd ask, "What do you put in your tuna salad?" and the person taking my order would say, "Just mayo." And then when the sandwich came, it would have chopped chili peppers or live caterpillars or something blended in. So I gave up on public tuna salad. I only eat what I make. In an upcoming post, I'll tell you how I do this…and believe it or not, I have something to complain about there, too.
For now, I just want to say: There are new moves across the country to force restaurants to divulge nutritional info on their menus. I'm not completely comfortable with this being mandated by law…though the info itself is welcome. Wouldn't you like to know before you order the Bistro Shrimp Pasta at Cheesecake Factory that a single serving contains 2,285 calories and contains 73 grams of fat and more sodium than they have in Utah?
But what I'd really like to see more restaurants do is tell you what's in what you're ordering and what can be omitted. I'd like to know before I decide that the turkey meatloaf comes in a sauce made out of the contents of old Lava Lamps and that the stuffed salmon is stuffed with teriyaki-flavored Soylent Green. It's pretty awful but it's better than cole slaw…