Culinary calamities
I love eating out, but every now and then things go wrong. Horribly wrong. Chefs snort the wrong spice and get creative with it, usually by having a fusion grand mal fit. Sadly, people are too bullied and tastebud numbed to say anything.
Here's my current list of horrors. What's yours?
Quail egg rolled in celery salt. Tactical nuke for your tongue it may be, but a starter it isn't. Ideal for anyone intent on not keeping the rest of the dinner down.
Grilled cod with polenta and a cabernet-miso reduction. Not even Mengele could've dreamt this one up.
Wasabi mayonnaise. Why? Was the chef horribly bullied as a kid and decided to take his revenge on the world with this?
Tapas. Now Tapas the way the Spanish do them are delicious. It's lots of little dishes, all lovely. However, your chance of getting anything resembling real Tapas outside Spain is zero. Hummus with cream cheese, guacamole with cream cheese, and mayo with cream something and chilli, together with oily, doughy "focaccia" bread is often sold as "Tapas". You have been warned.
Satay/Sate. This delicious Malaysian dish, cooked over charcoal hasn't travelled at all well outside SE Asia. It got sweetened to the hilt, and had mayo-peanut sauce added on top. Wall-to-wall vomiting ensued.
The catering in the World Trade Centre Expo, Taipei, Taiwan. The reddest sausages, the spongiest bread; potato that is only that in name; mayonnaise ejaculated all over everything, sugar galore and no discernible nutritional value. Your meal is served.
Japanese curry. Some war crimes are allowed to continue until this day.
Australian pasta/New Zealand "fresh pasta". Dried wallpaper glue for that Mediterranean zing in your kitchen.
Uncle Ben's Rice. When I was little, we used to call rice ants' eggs. That's because they served us Uncle Ben's rice.
Drizzled. Last time I looked, drizzling in public was punishable by a great many years in prison. So why aren't more chefs in gaol?
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Comment by Fa Lo Suee, on 14-Aug-2006 22:32
Chicken Laksa. I have never dared tried whatever is on offer here in New Zealand, not especially the abominable Cup-A-Soup powdered stuff. I know that there are many, many variants of Laksa (there is one for each state of Malaysia) but the ones they so fondly advertise here are anything but poor, bastard children. You can find authentic laksa recipes here: http://kuali.com/
Comment by Philip, on 16-Aug-2006 18:07
Anything with bloody chili in it. Chili is mainly used to diusguise the taste of rotting meat. It kills flavor and burns your mouth. Some people are even allergic to it and come up in blisters.
I would like to see restaurants required to identify any dish with bloody chili in it with a large red "Contains Chili - Dangerous to Taste" sticker. Food with chili in it only tastes of hurt.
And what I'd like to do to the Christchurch pie company that ruined a really good chicken pie by dousing it in disgusting chili that they never mentioned on the label - would be to make them all eat a vat of the loathsome stuff.
Comment by Fa Lo Suee, on 16-Aug-2006 19:45
If you know how to use chilli (and your tongue has had YEARS of training), it's a fantastic condiment!
Some foods are just wrong without chilli. Indian curries found at local takeaways are usually guilty of this heinous culinary crime. Of course, one shouldn't be overzealous when using chilli.
Comment by rob Hosking, on 22-Aug-2006 08:44
One culinary crime which sticks in the memory was at a Japanese restaurant in Auckland about 10 years ago. It had just opened, the entire staff seemed to have just got off the plane.
The food itself was excellent, so went back with a team from work. Decided to have a drink with the dinner. It was agreed the red wine looked good (by the others, I wasn't' drinking at this point in my life). We watched as the waitress went back and got the red wine
FROM THE FRIDGE.
The other crime I recall was from a flatmate at Uni who cooked us - once - these awful things call buckwheat groats. Like tubes of rolled up carpet.
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Comment by freitasm, on 14-Aug-2006 22:25
Bad food in Sydney, Juha?