Restaurants

Delivered as a Toastmasters speech

I have an intense, love hate relationship with restaurants. I love to eat, and I hunger drives me to eat even if I didn't, but sometimes I'm paranoid about the food they serve. Did you see the pictures of the McDonald's Chicken McNuggets that included a chicken head. It was breaded, larger than the other McNuggets in the carton, but it was a real chicken head. It's not that I want to eat deep-fried chicken heads, which, by the way, are considered a delicacy in Arkansas, but because previous to that, I was convinced that McDonald's chicken nuggets had no actual chicken in them. If you ever bitten into one, as opposed to plopping it in your mouth, and looked at the insides, it looks nothing like meat. It doesn't even look like food. At least a chicken head is real chicken.

I'm going to offer you some easy to understand tips and suggestions for improving your restaurant experience. I don't want you to be afraid, but merely aware, and possibly empowered to leave a restaurant when the time is right.

The first tip is that you should never go to a restaurant if you're hungry. In fact, if you're very hungry, a restaurant is the last place you want to be, because if you were hungry enough, you'd eat the chicken head.

The next thing to consider is the name of the restaurant. If it has any form of Mom in the name -- Mom's Cafe, Mother's Hometown Goodness, or Ma's Place -- I won't eat there. My mother killed my father with her stuffed cabbages, which is a very unpleasant way to die, and maybe it's his own fault for eating so many in a single sitting. But you are an adult now, and if you want to eat with your mother, then by all means go visit. Do not delude yourself into thinking a restaurant will serve hearty, healthy food because they drop the M-bomb. They are hiding something behind those apron strings.

Once inside, I like to focus on what I see before me -- the plates, the silverware, and water. The plates should be clean. The silverware should match. Fork on the left, knife and spoon on the right. The water should not smell like Lake Erie.

I also pay attention to the wait staff. If the waiter has shaved arms, a shaved head, and a pale complexion, I immediately leave. I have this bias that hearty, healthy food encourages hair growth -- so Greek and Middle Eastern restaurants are actually on my list of acceptable restaurants, because they have some of the hairiest waiters known to mankind.

If the waitress is thin, I am very suspicious. Restaurants don't pay very well, so waittresses must rely on supplementing their income by eating the leftovers from the meal. And if the waitress is starving, the food must not be very good.

Once you are past these early warning signs, you have to be willing to completely suspend belief. You have to imagine that everything is going to be fine. When the kitchen door opens and you hear someone sneeze <<sneeze>>, you have to think that the sputum from that sneeze was magically captured in a microfiltration system and none of the food was contaminated. When you hear the crash of plates shattering, you have to believe that blood from the ensuing cut will not go unnoticed because you ordered chicken marinara, and that no shards of glass were catapulted across the counter and onto your food.

I once took a drink in a restaurant, and realized a foreign object had entered my mouth. My tongue carefully maneuvered the object to my lips, and I realized it was a shard of glass. Luckily I wasn't cut, but I spoke to the waiter. I said, "Excuse me, but there is glass in my drink." He said, "I'm sorry sir, but next time I will bring your drink in a glass."

And do we even want to know when the cook is not feeling well? Of course not. You can't win. The Dept. of Community Health refers to it as norovirus, but we all know it means vomiting and diarrhea. Do you realize that most restaurants don't offer sick leave benefits, so think how bad the diarrhea has to be for the cook to stay home. And who do they call as a replacement? Do they check his references, taste his food, or get a swab from his throat to make sure he is not also infected with some disease? Of course not. They want someone who is #1) not wearing an electronic tether, and #2) has never killed a person with the food they cook, as far as they know.

Finally, I don't trust leftovers. If it wasn't so good that I absolutely had to eat it while I was at the restaurant, why will taking it home make it better? And I absolutely, positively, won't eat anyone else's leftovers -- again. My wife once brought home half a sandwich, the remains of her lunch. She insisted that I try it because it was from a new restaurant. I wasn't in the mood, but she pestered me and finally I broke down. I took a bite, didn't really like it, but I didn't think it was bad.

I said, "Well, I've had better tuna salad. Was that some kind of cumen or vinegar they used to spice it up?"

She replied, "Oh, it was chicken salad. Maybe I shouldn't have left it in the car all afternoon."

A couple of days later, when I was released from the hospital, we happened to drive by the place. My wife said, "Oh, what a coincidence." It looked normal and inviting. We turned the corner, and I was able to see around back. I saw a skinny, pale waittress smoking a cigarette as she leaned against the dumpster. There were two police cars there, and the cook was bent over the hood of one of those police cars, his hands handcuffed behind his back.

If that restaurant was still open, it would be off of my list.

Mickey Hadick

September 2008