one of these things is not like the other

[harborshore]

Dearest sushi place,

I do, in fact, enjoy your salmon rolls. They're fresh and tasty. However. In an order labeled 'vegetarian,' I wasn't expecting them to appear. Fish? Also counts as meat.

Sincerely,

Vee

Dear flist, tell me about that time you ordered food and it didn't quite work out right.

Comments

[eledhwenlin]

Let me tell you a story about Japan. One of my friends there was a vegetarian. Japan is not a very vegetarian-friendly country because they don't get that. Like, people who don't eat FISH.

This was very nicely exemplified one night during a tabehoudai. That's an all-you-can-eat thing. Instead of a buffet, you get a menu and the cost of it covers everything you order within the next two hours.

So. We were at the restaurant (it was a birthday party). So the menu goes sushi this, sushi that, curry, chicken and some more chicken, etc. My friend, A, could basically eat like three things off that menu. No biggie, she said, she can eat rice! She's used to that.

We order a rice. The rice comes decorated with thinly sliced pieces of fish on top and ittybitty little fishes in the rice. A goes D:

We ordered another bowl of rice and explained to the waiter that our friend doesn't eat fish. His face: ?______?

But, okay, another bowl of rice we get! Without little fishies! But still with the fish shavings on top.

They got it right the third time, but dude. That was a lot of rice we had to eat.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Oh my god. *facepalm* That's truly special, right there. Your poor friend. ://///

Yeah, these rolls--there was a lot of salmon. Which would be fine! I just also had salmon for lunch. I've eaten way too much salmon today, in sum.

[turps33.livejournal.com]

Oh man, that isn't cool at all.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

It was mostly funny--except that I'd already had salmon at lunch, and so it was kind of like, well, okay, again.

[anoneknewmoose.livejournal.com]

I am not vegetarian or allergic to anything BUT.

One time my friends and I went out for Mexican. We were a big party (like 10 people) and it was rush time, so we knew we'd have to wait, but after a half hour of sitting outside and then a half hour at the bar looking at a big empty table that had menus and cutlery stacked on it, we got up and started passing shit out and seating ourselves. :|

They took our order like ten minutes later. I don't actually LIKE Mexican, so I ordered a hamburger off the kids' menu--except it was listed as a cheeseburger. "No cheese. No queso! No queso!"

Guess what I got (like twenty minutes later). :| And my friends' quesadilla that was supposed to be half beef/half chicken had shrimp on it. So I sent my burger back and watched everyone else dig in.

FINALLY got a PLAIN hamburger. (We'd been at the restaurant almost two hours at this point.) Pour ketchup on, take a big bite, delicious!

I absentmindedly put it upside down and looked? And there was mold on the bun :| luckily on the opposite side of what I'd eaten but :| :| :|

We got our meal free and I ended up having to rush through McDonald's drive-thru before having to get back to camp.

[jamjar.livejournal.com]

In Japan, a friend of mine who was vegetarian, ordered a salad. She confirmed that there was no meat in the salad, no fish, nothing, said that she was vegetarian, that she was allergic to meat, that she absolutely couldn't have any. She spoke Japanese, so she was able to be very clear.

Waiter said fine, yes, he understood. No, he'd make sure they left off the tuna, it was just lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber.

The salad came. It had baconbits on the top.

She always checked when we went traveling for Indian restaurants in whatever city we visited, because she knew that she could get vegetarian stuff there.

[mrsquizzical.livejournal.com]

how about the other day when i ordered a chai latte and took a huge sip of doubleshot latte. no big deal? except that i detest and loathe coffee with a passion. i am a tea girl through and through and it was such a horrid, rude shock. :(((

[mrsquizzical.livejournal.com]

i won't go into the times people have assured me that something they want to give my kids is gluten and dairy free, only for me to check either the labels or the ingredients to discover that, no actually totally not. this includes in hospital, btw. where i had to explain to a dietitian why having a gluten free item that had dairy, and a dairy free item that had gluten, meant that the meal wasn't actually gluten and dairy free? *SIIIGH* (i was trying so hard not to be ~that parent, not making a fuss or whatever. but seriously. a dietitian.)

[nev-longbottom.livejournal.com]

There was an italian recipe with some kind of...cini? but i wasn't pepperoni and the meat was listed as beef. I ate a bunch of the vegetable before I tried the pasta and reliazed the little sliced bits were in fact pork.It was so awkward. I hadn't ever heard or seen this pig product anywhere in my life and the waitress was like, "Uhh, yeah it contains pork. Didn't you see that woprd on the menu? It's like, right there."

Also got the taco salad from some place, and the ground beef had this like, creeper after flavor and it wasn't til I was like, really sick that I found out it was ground pork instead of beef because they ran out and decided to mix meats without telling people.

:/ Seriously, Hallal exists Anchorage. Stop pretending it doesn't.

[nev-longbottom.livejournal.com]

Oddly, the pork thing happens ALL THE TIME up here. Even my roommates keep making accidental mistakes. "WE ORDERED PIZZA! WORRY NOT HOMIE!"

And I om nom nomed my way up half a slice before I noticed some pepperoni hidden under the veggies and what I had thought was ground beef but turned out to be sausage. *.*

I felt so sheepish when I called out for pizza and so did the roomie when I pointed out that pepperoni has pork. "Really?" and then the pizza guy gave us a cheerful lecture on how pepperoni is just the fermented meat and that it didn't need to be made of pork products to be- "Are you saying that Papa Johns stocks pepperoni made of non pork?" and he looked so crestfallen when he had to admit that they did not. Nor did any pizzaria he knew in the city.

[elucreh.livejournal.com]

I'm gluten intolerant. I went to a restaurant.

Is this soup glutenfree?

Well, I think so.

I ask because sometimes soup is thickened with flour. Do you know if your soup is thickened with flour?

I don't.

Could you find out?

I will go find out!...It's not thickened with flour.

Okay. And it doesn't come in contact with bread or noodles or anything like that?

...I don't know.

Could you find out?

I will go find out!...No bread, no noodles, no flour.

Great! I will have a bowl of the soup.

Here is your soup.

...this soup has croutons in it.

AND SCENE.

[desfinado.livejournal.com]

This is confusing to me. Vegetarian: no fish. o___________o

I was in Japan on a trip in grade 10 and wasn't vegetarian but was the PICKIEST TEENAGER IN THE WORLD (like, I hated sushi. I didn't eat sushi the ENTIRE TIME I WAS IN ACTUAL JAPAN. I STILL REGRET THIS). So I stuck to rice and gyoza and veggie tempura.

One day I was starving and trying to identify what was in a white-looking tempura at a grocery store without being able to read the label, and it cost me the equivalent of like $15 so it was pretty expensive. My friends convinced me it MUST be potato and I took a big bite and it was MOTHERFUCKING SQUID. ALL RUBBERY AND WHITE. EUUUGGGHHHHH

LOL I would probably try squid now if I, y'know, WAS AWARE THAT IT WAS SQUID. But I guess that story was more about MY inability to identify things and less about someone giving me the wrong food, heh.

♥

[athenejen]

Salads where the unspecified cheese turns out to be gorgonzola or another blue cheese, or if I accidentally end up with blue cheese dressing instead of ranch...

I am allergic to mold. My body is convinced that blue cheese is not only not food but ought to be kept as far away as possible. It gets close to my face and my instinctive reaction is to throw it across the room.

So that's less than ideal, but I know I'm lucky for that to be the only thing I have a strong reaction to. I had a housemate once who was so allergic to walnuts I couldn't even eat them (or anything that they happened to be in) if she was in the house because the dust would start to get to her.

[athenejen]

Oh! And I have a much more hilarious story involving one of the best steaks I ever had. It was in Budapest on a college choir field trip, and a bunch of us decided to go to this fancy restaurant that was near our hotel. The exchange rate + standard of living differences at the time meant that it was quite a bit more affordable than a similar restaurant in the US would be; I don't think I'd ever even been to a truly excellent steak house before. I ordered the namesake steak without really inquiring as to what it consisted of, because it seemed like the thing to do. It was quite dark in the restaurant, candlelit and all that. There was a (delicious) brownish sauce over the steak as well as over the several smallish chunks of things on top of it that appeared to be vegetables. I unearthed one that was vaguely pale and cube-shaped, assuming that it was a potato, and put it in my mouth.

I was completely shocked when it turned out to be a pineapple.

The steak was still delicious, and it was totally what I'd ordered, but I still remember that first moment of astonishment.

[clachnaben]

Not totally me ordering something but I work in a restaurant as a waitress and one time I get called over by a table and the lady there turns over the leaf of her ceasar salad and there's a tiny caterpiller crawlling around, enjoying himself.

Surprisingly she was a lot nicer about it than most of our customers whose food is fine. But still! Caterpiller in her salad!

I'm a vegetarian and restaurants labelling fish stuff as vegetarian bugs me so bad. D: