Tag: food

Food Faux Pas 2

1979 – Risotto Milanese – Italy

Sometime later, another continent, another time, but not much later, I was living – and enjoying life – in Italy, despite the fact I was broke, spoke little or no Italian and had trouble finding an apartment after staying too long in hotels I could ill afford. A lot of the food was new to me – I had grown up where the only spaghetti available had been in a Heinz can! It wasn’t until 1975 when I hitch-hiked from the south of the Netherlands down to meet my sister (who was living in Rome at the time) that I first came across such things as pizza and real spaghetti, long strands of durum wheat noodles. 

Anyway, years later, maybe 1979 or 1980, I was working in Milan in Northern Italy when I was having dinner in a simple family trattoria near where I lived at the time – Muggiano – and I saw something on the menu that jogged a memory. 

Years before this, recovering from a broken arm and leg in hospital, my eldest sister would visit and eat her lunch beside my bed before returning to her work dept. in the hospital. Such first tastes – for me, a 13 year old boy – of yoghurt, plain and flavoured – have remained with me to this day and I distinctly remember her enjoying something called Vesta Risotto. Vesta, I already knew was a brand name for these ready made meals like Beef Curry with boil in the bag rice and a separate pouch for the sauce. The Risotto was just another one of their various product line. The thing was I remembered the colour picture on the cardboard cover of the container. There was stuff in the rice – you know, not just rice but there were bits of chopped up things like carrots and other stuff and maybe meat and …

When the Risotto Milanese arrived in a shallow bowl it was – to me – an unappetising pile of grey sludge. Not a hint of chopped up stuff – nothing. I didn’t even bother to taste it but called the waiter over and handed him the dish, No, No, I shook my head. I asked for a Risotto Milanese and this – I gestured dismissively at the bowl in the perplexed waiter’s hand. Take it away.’

Minutes later an immaculate new bowl – in a different ceramic dish – came out, looking exactly the same as the previous one. This time, the anxious / curious waiter stepped back from the table and waited.

I know I objected again, convinced that the colour cover of a take-away fast food dish truly portrayed the original. I am fairly sure, in my ignorance, that I sent it away a second or even a third time before patience wore out on both our sides and since then I restricted my culinary journey in Italy to ‘Spagheteria’ type restaurants where everything – including the ice-cream – was served as recognisable  spaghetti strands.

Food Faux Pas #1

A New York Cheeseburger

I love my food but over the last few decades there have been a few embarrassing incidents. Here’s one of them, mind you, there are a few more to come (shuffles feet awkwardly under the table).

I was in a new bar recently and asked for my usual pint* of puggle but when it came it seemed significantly smaller that the standard pint size. On querying the bar staff, I was informed that they do not serve pints, only the measure known as a schooner*.  ‘Well, you could have mentioned that to me’, I remonstrated with the staff but all I got was a smiling shrug in reply. A friend with me at the time, gently pulled me away from the bar, advising me to let it go and reminding me of past times when I had a disagreement in a cafe or restaurant.

It is not that I have any basic dislike for the measure called a schooner here in Australia. Far from it. As my friend pointed out, it is large enough to quench the thirst with a few hefty swigs, small enough to stay cool in our hot climate while drinking and maintains some semblance of a head before being drained. It’s more the surprise at not being served the customary thing – a drink, food or anything else really – expected and being presented with something extravagantly different in its place.

My first – and there are a few more, I blushingly acknowledge, rather embarrassing episode of that occurrence where I am wrong but insist on what was an erroneous belief. Anyway, this was a long time ago when I had some young adult pretensions of being a vegetarian – I think I had been so for at least several months by the time I rocked up in New York, USA in 1977 on, what was then called, a J1 Student Working Visa. Maybe on that first night, strolling down – could it have been 5th Ave? – I was looking for an authentic diner where I could sprawl over the counter and ask for  ‘cawfey and slace o’ that blueberry pahy’.

Sitting on a high stool at the polished metal bar, a large, a well-endowed lady called me honey and asked me what I wanted. Suddenly hungry I decided on a cheeseburger with fries. Minutes later an oozing slab of minced meat overflowing the bun in which it was sandwiched arrived. Lifting the top of the bun gingerly, I inspected the melting sheets of orange cheese on top of the onions and gherkins to reveal the thick slab of glistening meat. ‘Sorry’, I said, pushing the plate away and addressing the large lady. “I didn’t order this, I asked for a CHEESE burger. Not this.’

There was a sudden frown of perplexity on the lady’s face while she looked at me and then back down at the plate between us. ‘But Honey, this here is what we call a cheeseburger, see , here’s the burger and this here’, – she poked at the solidifying mass of yellow goo – is the cheese, see?’’

Well,  I didn’t of course but given the interest my rejection of the cheese burger was causing in the vicinity of the diner, I thought it might be better to forgo the coffee and pie for a later date and venue.

Easy, I suppose, to look back and laugh at the naivety and simplicity but at that time, burgers – hamburgers or cheeseburgers were new, not just to me but to everyone I knew at the time. In fact Mc Donalds had only just opened that summer in Dublin, the same year I flew to New York.

  • a pint = 570ml and is about 1/3 larger than a schooner.
  • A schooner = 425m