There are some restaurants which seem to do things really well, but other things really poorly, so you only end up going there if you’re in the mood for the ‘good’ things. For instance, there’s a local diner-type place that makes what they call the ‘colossal burger’ – it’s a huge hand-made burger that’s fire-seared and just completely tasty. And their natural cut fries are just plain GOOD. This same place serves breakfasts (all day) as well, but most of what we’ve had there has been disappointing. Flat, thin, and tasteless scrambled eggs, pancake syrup that’s bland and runny… all the breakfast foods just seem to have no flavor at all. Before we stopped trying that place for the occasional breakfast out, we’d always leave feeling like none of the food actually made physical contact with our taste buds.
There’s also another local eatery within a store that we’ve dropped by a few times. They, too, had good burgers and fries, so we thought we’d go back and order their burritos. (It’s a limited menu kind of place.) I’ve never HAD such a horrible meal in my life. The chicken was on the edge of being either spoiled or doused in so much MSG that it tasted like salt gone bad – if that’s even possible. There was no cheese at all, the drop of sour cream had been placed inside the burrito and you couldn’t tell it was there.
Is it who’s cooking? What the cook knows how to do? What the cook LIKES themselves? Do cooks generally TASTE their own food? I guess I’m suspicious that the food that doesn’t taste good was made by those who consider cooking just another job and who don’t really have passion or joy for it. I guess those who aren’t in it for the taste tend to judge it by other critera, such as what the full plate looks like when ‘dressed’, etc. (John had a fellow cook tell him one day that if the food LOOKED good, the customer’s imaginations would fill in the rest. Both of us wondered, why not just make the food taste good in the first place? You don’t eat food with your EYES, right?) Anyway – that’s my rant for today – LOL.