TheFoodTutor

Very good information, therese. Personally, I had a case of short-lived food poisoning about 15 years ago, and looking back on it now, I don't think I attributed it to the correct item that I'd ingested. I became ill during my meal at a restaurant, and I associated it with the oysters I'd eaten as an appetizer. Now, oysters are risky foods, but not likely to make you sick in less than half an hour unless contaminated with a toxin or possibly a chemical cleanser of some sort. Looking back on it, it's really hard to say, but I did avoid eating oysters for about 6 years because I just really couldn't stomach the thought of them. As far as the issues with silverware usage, I know about many things that could go wrong, causing someone to get dirty silver: silver placed on the wrong tray, improper amounts of sanitizing chemicals in the dishwasher, silver being polished with a cloth that's not sanitary, etc. But as much as I know that these things can and do happen, I still eat in restaurants and use the silver in my place setting. I suppose I could bring my own plasticware like Jack Nicholson in "As Good As It Gets," but I don't think it's worth looking like a freak.

Oooh, Hy's Caesar salad and cheese toast. ← Curious - What type of cheese is in this cheese toast of which you speak? What makes it great?

As far as the situation in the original post, I probably would have been fine with it, too, but more than that, I wouldn't have insisted that the woman throw the skate away and get me another one. If I'd felt the practice was unsafe, I'd have just shook my head, told her that I'd changed my mind and she can put the fish back. Food workers perceive orders from customers as to how they are doing their jobs, ("throw that away and get me another" or "put on gloves") as hostile behavior, and I don't speak to anyone that way if I'm planning on buying something from them that I'm going to eat. I have, of course, declined some foodstuffs that I felt were prepared in a manner that disgusted me, as when I had an alcoholic roommate who made all kinds of sickening concoctions while he was drunk. I always just smiled, and said that I'd had a large lunch.

And even then you may not end up with an answer, particularly if it's a toxin-mediated episode (the most common): brief (usually less than 12 hours, though you'll feel pretty drained for a while) and violent. You'd pretty much have to get a sample of the food (instead of a sample of, um, whatever), and by the time the health department manages to scoot over to the restaurant it may be gone (consumed, thrown out, whatever). Only if you've been infected with something that can either be seen in a direct prep (believe me, you don't want me to go into details here) or cultured in a microbiology lab (something like Salmonella, for instance) or detected serologically (looking serially at your immune response) can the etiology actually be established. And getting a suitable sample can be harder than it sounds---by the time you feel like crawling out of your house to see the doctor that boat's pretty much sailed. ← Well, in my case, I'd still try. There are so many misconceptions about food safety, as with the perception that wearing gloves = safer than not wearing gloves, that I'd far prefer to establish a clear connection between what I ate and when I got sick over just saying, "Oh, don't ever eat at that Mexican joint called Escupimos en su Alimento. I got sick from a taco there, and man-oh-man, I'll never eat that kinda crap again!" There have been verifiable strains of bacteria that could be traced to specific sources, like the outbreak from the waterpark here in Georgia and a number of other cases. Being in the restaurant industry, I know I'm biased, but I really don't like to contribute to alarmist behavior that makes people scared of their food. So, with my background, I tend to fall back on science wherever possible.

Well, if I was just feeling a little bit off, how would I know for sure that I had food poisoning? Like most people who aren't doctors, and even some who are, I'm not always sure what's making me sick, unless there's an obvious cause. For instance, I've had more than my share of hangovers in my life, so when I wake up in the morning feeling headache and nausea, I'm pretty sure that I know what happened, especially if my tongue feels kinda furry. But if I ate something for lunch today, and I feel sick at around 8 p.m., has the incubation time for this particular food-born illness already passed? Or am I just feeling a little lactose intolerant today, and it was really my yogurt at breakfast that's making me gurgly? Or am I having a bout of Irritable Bowel Syndrome? Or possibly a virus? These things are all very subjective for most people, and most people have had a few cases of food poisoning in their lives, and in many cases they attributed it to the thing they ate recently that they thought was most suspect, but that's not always the correct assumption. The only way to know for sure is to do a test. Would I call anyone over a minor stomach upset? Probably not. But if I had an illness that lasted for more than a day, or even more than a few hours, and I suspected it was food related, I'd definitely contact someone.

Incidentally, I don't recommend calling the manager or owner of the restaurant as your first action when contracting a case of food poisoning. Restaurants of every kind get calls frequently from people who believe they've gotten sick on something or other they ate the other day, and they have no way of distinguishing the real from the fake. I know this will sound hard to believe, but people will even ask for free food coupons when making a complaint about receiving food poisoning, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. If the food made you sick, why would you want more of it for free? Having been on the receiving end of some of these calls, I can only say that I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't heard it with my own ears. And on the other hand, there are also unscrupulous restaurant owners who are just the sorts who'd be likely to be running a dirty kitchen that could make you sick. The health department defines a food poisoning outbreak as two or more people who ate the same thing at the same time, both of them getting sick. Now, if you were a restaurant owner, and you received two calls in the same day from two individuals who both ate the chicken francese a couple nights ago, you'd probably prefer that they call you rather than the health department, so that you can offer them some kind of compensation and keep it on the DL, but I'd personally prefer that you call the health department so that the problem can not only be verified, but it can also be fixed.

I would, absolutely. If unsafe conditions are in place in a restaurant, and they are bad enough to make me (a healthy adult) sick, they could kill a young child or an elderly person. I'd feel an absolute responsibility to report it, be tested through a doctor and through the health department, have the bacteria in my stool or vomitus matched with the original source and have the problem stopped.

I'm sorry. What I meant was, surely the health department dealt with the restaurant so that other people would not get sick from the same source, regardless of whether you're food preferences were irrevocably changed. It's easy to see how it could turn one off of sushi to get sick on it once, but it would still be nice to see that the health department did an investigation and determined the cause (cross contamination, improper temperatures) of the illness.

When you contacted the health department about your illness, surely they dealt appropriately with the restaurant in question?

I'm going to preface this by saying that, as a restaurant worker, I am ServSafe Certified, and I am knowledgable and careful in all of my food handling techniques. However, I am also very aware of how many people touch my food before it gets to me, and how unclean a lot of very "clean-looking" things can be. While NulloModo and I probably don't agree on absolutely everything, I tend to take his attitude toward street food and some of the more gritty aspects of the really terrific ethnic foods that can be had in my city. Once, I was working a silver polishing shift (which is exactly as boring as it sounds) and the fine dining restaurant where I worked did a heck of a lot of volume, which meant that sometimes the silverware would have all sorts of remnants of food clinging to it, but I knew that the silverware was sterilized by both heat and chemicals, so while it looked gross, I knew it would still be safe to polish and use for service. Sometimes, I would have to send the silver back through, which meant putting my hands through more heat and chemicals to polish, a definite disincentive for me, as I was already chapped after just a few hours. So anyway, a chef walked by my station and grabbed a fork out of the unpolished pile, as he'd just plated himself a little bit of dinner. I stopped him, pointed out the nastiness in the bustub with the unpolished silver, and offered him one of the ones I'd polished. His response? "Nah. This way it strengthens my immune system." So I'd have to say that being big into food is not mutually exclusive with having a cavalier attitude about the food one ingests. It's more a matter of what one perceives as being threatening. I would, however, like to caution some of the posters in this thread against reading Kitchen Confidential.

Chicken Kiev. Malted Milkshakes. Relish trays. Pickled or Creamed Herring. Compound Butters. And this isn't really a food, but I have an odd fascination with it: There's a Chinese restaurant near me that still has a full page of fancy cocktails, some that come in a giant bowl big enough for two or more people to sip out of, and all of them are garnished with plenty of fruit and umbrellas, and some of the cocktails are set on fire when served. Serving drinks in a coconut also gives me a little thrill. Maybe I just have poor taste.

Fascinating blog, and I love the pictures of the markets. Very cute kitties, too. I'm wondering if perhaps the lock on the refrigerator is to protect Muslims from roving bandits who will stuff a piece of pork in there with your Halal ingredients, which would make everything inedible. Have you seen any stories of such bandits in the newspapers?

Someone should point out that regular Atlantans don't usually eat at Iris, Woodfire, Madras Saravana Bhavan, Yong Soo San and Mary Mac's all in one week. We do eat in restaurants pretty frequently, but this has been quite a celebratory week. So I guess we have to wait until it's my turn to foodblog for us to see a picture of you, huh?

That's exactly what I think every time I drive by that building. We can't be the only people who've noticed it. I like the julli from Royal Sweets, and I'm also a non-Indian who likes several of those desserts, but I must admit that I wouldn't know that I liked them if therese hadn't told me about specific things to try. Was the lady at Royal Sweets satisfied with how much you bought?

What comes in the box that looks like a British phone booth?

Roma tomatoes. They look pretty nice, too.

And indeed, there is! ← Thank you so much for that link. There was a time when I felt somewhat overly geeky about the fact that I owned that one installment and thought that it was so cool. Knowing that there are other people who like these makes me want to seek out the whole set. I think that's my new mission in life, actually. I had lunch with the blogger again today. Boy, she's swell.

I hate you for having such a nice kitchen you know. Now that I've looked at all the details of it, I've decided you're not my friend any longer. Well, on second thought, there aren't many other people who share an interest in "crap in a glass," so, OK, you can be my friend again. The fact that just a mention of those Time-Life books in that series strikes a chord with so many people reading this blog is notable. I happen to have one of them, the one on Russia (which encompasses all the countries in the former Soviet Union), and I love it. I'm thinking of digging around to collect the whole set. Is there already a thread on those books? Because there should be.

See, now therese and I are a lot alike, but I've got to admit, if that were my lunch, I'd say, "OK, but where's the goddamned food?" There's no way I could get through my day on that. Maybe I should start sneaking food over to her office. I think I know what the seeds are, as I've got some in my fridge right now, in a can with some sterchlia (a murky looking fruit) added. But I won't tell if you don't want me to.

<Hoping therese will forgive me for responding in her absence> The Asian food available here is quite amazing, and it's a wonderful part of living here. Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese (though some Chinese restaurants here have variable quality), Malaysian and Japanese readily available, and even some Indonesian occasionally. Large Asian populations are scattered in various areas, both ITP and OTP, interspersed with a variety of Hispanic populations from Mexico, Cuba, Peru, Venezuela. . . just about anywhere. And then there is a large pocket of Indian restaurants, a single Bangladeshi restaurant, plus many markets for ingredients to make these cuisines. Outwards from the city, there are more European markets catering to Russian ex-pats and other enclaves of Czechs, Slovaks, some Hungarians and Polish immigrants. . . Great Persian and other Middle Eastern foods. . . So, basically, lots of really great options if you like variety in your food. High-end European a little harder to find, no foie gras stands on every corner or anything like that. And probably the hardest thing to come by is really good Southern food in the city. She can tell you about that more than I can, definitely, and there are a few places that are very popular and/or serve authentic Southern dishes. But you can pretty much find just about anything here, and there's more than enough to eat. Provided that you can sit in traffic long enough to get there, which is why some of us live intown. Oh, but there's plenty of mediocre pap available, too. The trick is weeding that out.

Therese mentioned to me that she's having just a bit of technical difficulty with her internet today, so I thought I'd stop in and let everyone know that she'll be back shortly. As far as the Korean food, the pan chan we were talking about, in the pictures indicating 10 small side dishes above, are little pickles and salads that come with everything you order, and they tend to be unique to the individual restaurant, with some dishes that are mainstays. Kim chee being very common - the spicy, fermented cabbage in the bottom-most right picture - and other types of pickled vegetables including cucumber, bean sprouts, bamboo shoots, spinach and even okra. Some times there are soy beans and, alternatively, boiled peanuts. There's also a whipped potato salad in one of the little dishes. She's more familiar with the big pancake than I am, but it's very easy to like. Just a simple batter encompassing vegetables and seafood, which is cooked in that large cast iron pan until crisp (presumably well-oiled, but the fat content balances out when weighed against all the veggies eaten) and cut into wedges while it's still sizzling. The mackerel is very simply char-grilled, giving a flavor that complements the fish very well. And then there's rice, but not much need to eat it, since there's so much other food to eat, so no need to have a heart attack over whether to use your spoon or chopsticks for the rice, or whether you can pick up the bowl. . . I really like Korean food a lot, actually, but no need for me to take over her whole blog or anything. . . She'll be back momentarily.

Thai iced coffee? Looks delicious. I have more than enough leftovers for several days from that lunch, plus I got several pastries from Mozart as well. Therese was disappointed that they didn't have the lovely boxes of small cookie assortments they usually have, because in their place they were carrying Valentine's day assortments of chocolates. I picked up a box of those for my boyfriend, and it's very cute. It reads, "Sweet Message - I wish you happy forever." Of course, it would have been even cuter if I'd picked up a box that actually had chocolates in it. Great blog, therese. Was tonight your V-D, or are there more V-D festivities to come?

Question about the frites stand: When it says the price does not include "saus," does that mean condiments like mayo and ketchup are extra? Or does that refer to a cheese sauce or gravy? And is there a recipe for Belgian mayo that I can make at home? I've never had it, and I'd love to try it. Wonderful blog, by the way.

But, on the gripping hand, there's probably 50 Bennigan's or Olive Garden-type restaurants in this country for every one French Laundry. So I think the original assertion -- that most waiters don't report all of their tips -- is valid. ← Of course it is. And the average tips at Bennigan's and Olive Garden are a lot smaller than at a higher end place, which is the point I was trying to make.

Well, I think you might be taking it a little too literally. When I say "reach into my own pocket" what I really mean is something more like taking tips off of my other tables to pay the tipshare on the table that stiffed me, and that's not just possible, it happens all the time. If table A has a tab of $50, I have to pay $1 for having waited on that table, whether A tips me or not because we pay 2% tipshare at the restaurant where I work. If table B has another tab of $50, and that person tips me $7.50, I pay the house $1 and keep $6.50, and my net for the two tables will be $5.50 for $100 worth of sales. If table A is my only table for the day, I leave $1 in the hole, plus my $2.13 per hour wage for the number of hours I worked. Hypothetically, if this keeps up all week long, my employer will have to pay me an amount that will bring my income up to the $5.35 minimum wage, but this rarely happens, and when it does happen, servers aren't likely to push the point with their employers because it's too much of a hassle. My point was that, when I wait on a table and get stiffed, I pay for the privilege of having brought their food and drinks to them. Probably the one time this happened that irked me the most was when I waited on a couple one day, and it was my last table of the day, late enough that I was actually staying after my shift to wait on them. Normally, I would have transferred the table to the incoming server, but she called sick and wasn't able to come in and take over my station. So I kept refilling their drinks and bringing them extra sides of salad dressing until it was time for them to pay the bill. The man gave me a debit card to run, and the card was declined, so I asked him if he had another card. He didn't seem surprised at all that his card was bad, and Smoove B-style, he told his lady friend, "Baby, you're gonna have to pay this one." She gave him a big ole' "No You Di-n't!" look and angrily pulled 2 20s out of her purse, which I took and told her I'd bring change, at which point she turned to me and nodded emphatically. Looking down at the check, I saw the total was $39.58, and since I didn't have exact change on me, I put 2 quarters on a plate with the bill, set the plate on the table and thanked her. And then she scooped the quarters into her purse and waddled out. So in that case, for the privilege of running to get their refills and sauces, I paid $.79 in tipshare, plus the additional 8 cents of her bill that I paid for her, and I stayed after my shift to do it, thereby reducing my take for the day. Those are the tables that make me feel special.