grizzly

I've gone to Chinese restaurants with friends who were Chinese or spoke Chinese, and had wonderful food, then gone back without them and been given menus full of sweet and sour glop. (I'm a Wasp, and don't speak any Chinese.) I've had similar experiences in other restaurants serving food out of the Euro-bland orbit. I suspect it's because Wasps are often turned off by offal and invertebrates, and the waiters don't want to deal with a revolted guest. But I'm not very squeamish, and I don't make a scene if I do order something new to me that I turn out not to like (rare, in my case). How do I get the waiters in such a place to treat me as an adult interested in good food - and give me the real menu and a little advice? I know there's often a language barrier, but it often feels as though the waiter doesn't think I'd be interested in the best the restaurant can do, and I am. After all, I'm there instead of at some fast food outlet.

I ate horse at the Harvard Faculty Club. I think it was the equivalent of filet. Not bad, a little sweeter than beef. I understand it was put on the menu there during the depression and was taken off when times got better, but some eminent professor had formed a taste for it and insisted it be put back on. I think it's still on the menu there (unless it's been taken off in the last 25 years or so). I'm not an academic now, but I remember checking into why the taboo on horsemeat seems to be so strong in the English-speaking world. It was attributed to the pagan Anglo-Saxon taste for horse sacrifices. Of course, once you sacrifice a horse, you need to do something with the leftovers (the gods usually get the less edible parts). Anyhow, once the missionaries came in, they preached so strongly against horse sacrifice/eating that it stuck. Since I'm not a medievalist, I couldn't check the story, but odder survivals of antiquity exist, like the gauge of trains. By the way, hi to Miz Ducky, I think we're classmates (Class of '79, North House, History and Lit)