Do food critics look this bad?

I don't remember getting such good treatment at a restaurant as I did tonight at the Saravanaa Bhavan.

It was about 9pm. I headed out to get something to eat, looking for a place I could settle down and scribble programming notes while eating.

My first restaurant choice had just closed, so I headed across the street to this Indian restaurant. At 9 pm, there were about 30 people outside, waiting to be seated. (That's typical for this place: families show up at 8:00 pm or later.)

I slipped in and waited for the seating hostess to return. Had I been at another table and seen the likes of me being served so quickly, I might've scrunched my eyebrows at the event. As she approached, I said "How long for one?" She walked right past me and took the names of some others standing by the podium. Had she just ignored me? I asked about "How long for one?" and she said something while grabbing menus. Not understanding what she said, I asked again, and this time heard her say with a pleasant smile, "Come." I think I remember babbling something in my surprise as I tried to comprehend that I was being seated immediately at a table that had room for two, when I had just seen "2" in several spots on the waiting list. I did what I could to thank her and express my amazement.

A server approached within 20 seconds and I told him what I wanted. He offered coffee? tea? which I declined. I started writing some programming notes on my sheet of paper. In two or three minutes, my meal arrived. I was amazed again.

Would your stomach have turned, too? The other night, I asked for a refill on my glass of water. Minutes before, I noticed a couple of waitresses bussing tables, with one of them picking up several glasses at once by sticking one finger in each glass and pinching the glasses together. I had noticed that waitress coughing as she walked all over the restaurant.
When I asked the hostess for a refill, I followed her signals across the room to the waitress who would bring me water--that same waitress. I watched her grab a big clear plastic pitcher, sticking her thumb on the inside as she handed it to the guy at the bar, a guy who I had also observed sticking his fingers inside glasses. He returned the filled pitcher to her.

I'm above this, I told myself. The water will not have touched where she grabbed, she'll pour me the glass of water and I'll be fine. Ah, but wouldn't you know it, she tipped the pitcher sideways to pour out its side instead of out the spout. "Umm," I said with a squint, about ready to ask for another glass of water, but when I thought about how many details I'd go through and how this appeared to be a rather systemic problem, I just said thank you and pushed the glass over to the side.

A party of five next to me that was still waiting for their food. They looked over at me and my food. And there was more reason to look at me. Just 20 minutes earlier, I had showered and towel-dried my hair but did not comb it. I had about three days' beard stubble. I was the only white guy in the place, and I was scribbling on paper. Had I been at another table and seen the likes of me being served so quickly, I might've scrunched my eyebrows at the event.

I suspect my hunger affected my perception: as I ate, I thought the portions looked slightly smaller than I was used to. But on I went with my programming on paper and wolfing down Indian food.

Then a well-dressed man approached and asked how everything was, and, with a gesture toward items on my plate, asked if would like some more of anything of those things. I don't remember being offered more of anything except soda and coffee, so I was taken aback. I told him the food was excellent; I mentioned that the portions did seem just slightly smaller than I was used to. He noted that perhaps the food was served hastily since they were very busy at the moment. But, hey, I didn't want to be a whiner, so I quickly shifted to tell him the story of my being seated immediately and how thankful I was for that and amazed. He again made the gesture and comment about the food. "Which would you like more of?" So, sheepishly I pointed; "Uh, this one?" As he left, he told me would bring three things.

One of the items he brought was not a regular in the traditional dinner I ordered, and it was quite a treat. I began to wonder if they thought I was a food critic. When I was writing programming notes on paper, did it appear to them that I was taking notes about their service and the quality of the food for some restaurant review article? I tell ya, that motivated me to keep programming!

At the end, I was really full, what with having eaten three extra items on top of the normal meal. The only thing left was a little tin of pickled lemon, a powerful item that I knew better than to add to my cauldron of a stomach in my semi-queasy state. I asked the server if I could get a little container. He came back with a little container full of pickled lemon. There wasn't room for me to fit in the tinfull from my plate.

After walking out of the restaurant, I realized I'd left the little container on the table, so I headed back in. The server met me and understood what happened. And then the well-dressed man approached and asked, "Is everything okay?" My gosh, yes! They exchanged words in their dialect to bring him up to speed, and off went the worker to get me yet another little container of pickled lemon.

So, the moral of the story is...I have no idea. But I got to program while eating Indian food without having shaved, and that's cool. Thanks to Saravanaa Bhaven in Sunnyvale for a wonderful meal!

A-traditional Thanksgiving

In the years of this last decade, Mom has asked what we want to do for the Thanksgiving meal. I got the impression several times that she was wanting a break from the work. And just about every year, I've suggested that we do something completely different and far simpler: just go out for Chinese food. I picked Chinese because I wanted to make her squirm; I was after the laugh.

Clearly, next best to a home cooked Thanksgiving meal would be going to a restaurant that serves most of the items found in our typical Thanksgiving meal. Next after that would be going to some American cuisine restaurant that we frequent. Nowhere near the top of the list would be going to a restaurant with no connection to Thanksgiving or American cuisine. But I still kinda liked the idea. Chinese food is great, it would relieve everyone of the burden of cooking, and, by golly, why are we so tied to tradition? Wouldn't some stretching do some good, some relaxing of rules? I suggested Chinese food every year. It was rejected every year. Though the words were different every year, they all basically meant, "No! John, you're goofy." And I laughed every year.

This year, Mom accepted an invitation to hang out in Colorado with my sister Joanne for Thanksgiving. I stayed in California. Alone! I decide where I eat this Thanksgiving! Chinese it is!

I packed a few goodies in the car: a flashlight for some last-minute geocaching and some reference material on programming.



Yay! I found the cache! That's probably the sixth time I've visited this location. And it's the smallest cache I've found, too. (Yes, that's the "log" in there, fan-folded to fit. And there's still room for another 20 people to write their names and date, like I did.) A nice victory before dinner.

I drove around, looking for places to eat. Most restaurants were closed. I came across an Indian place that I've enjoyed and pulled into the parking lot. But I backed out when I thought about how I wanted to check "had Chinese food for Thanksgiving" off my list. I made my way back to a Chinese buffet place that had quite a spread, for a bit higher of a price.

Ok, the place is Korean, and they serve a mix of Chinese, Japanese and Korean food. I was the only white dude there at the start. Perhaps at the end, too. Lots of black hair in the room. I loaded the plate up with sushi (including squid and baby octopus to test my nerves--no, I wouldn't do well on Fear Factor) and expected to fill the plate up with more stuff I encountered along the buffet bar. Then I came across a pan of meatballs. "That's just wrong," I thought. This photo op and accompanying caption immediately came to mind, and I headed back to the table.


Seafood and a meatball

I read a bunch of programming documentation and kept packing in the food.

Now that I think about it, I kept one Thanksgiving tradition: I packed myself to the point of discomfort.

Hard grapefruit, soft grapefruit

Mom's neighbors dropped off a bag of grapefruit from their tree. Last week, I juiced three of them (you decide: the neighbors or the grapefruit), poured the juice in a sterilized bottle, added a teaspoon of yeast and corked it with a glass tube and a rubber stopper. By morning, there was a steady stream of gas pockets rising through the column of water in the tube. I tossed around the idea of blogging about "hard grapefruit" to see if anyone else had made such.

A couple of days ago, Mom's old furnace quit, and Mom had a new one installed. The next evening, when we walked into the house, we picked up the faint smell of something like paint. I speculated that we might be smelling the gasses coming off of my brew. Mom thought it was a good smell, a smell of newness that came with the new furnace, something she was delighted had restored the warmth of the house in this chilly season.

Continuing to smell this "new furnace" today, a little bit stronger now in the family room, I sniffed around and found the culprit in the fruit basket.

Mom, I'll see if I can round up a better "new furnace" smell for you.