weak

I’m not very good at asking for things, asserting myself. For example, this morning I bought a cappuccino, just so that I could have the chocolate powder on the top. I don’t really like cappuccinos. I find them too strong, and they make me feel edgy, but it just doesn’t seem to be done to have a latte with chocolate on it. The complete antithesis of a friend of mine, whom I recently took to a trendy bar/restaurant near my work. Before I proceed, I have to say that I admire her for having the guts that I clearly lack. And there is a bit (a lot) of embrodiering here.
But... she must have tasted half the white wine menu before settling on the first one she tried, only to drink it by the glass. Later, she proceeded to order five small dishes, interrogating the impressively patient waitress (especially given that this was London) about the ingredients of each dish, asking for variations – could she have the skate without the cream sauce, and no dressing on the salad that accompanied it, the mozzarella and parma ham salad without the parma ham, the brandy snap basket of ice cream without the brandy snap biscuit. Oh, she really wasn’t holding back. It might have been the copious quantities of wine we had drunk by this point that made her so brazen, but, somehow, I think not. I’d have been sinking through the floor into the toilets below, if I hadn’t had the booze to muffle my embarrassment.
No real rason to be embarrassed.
I am just
weak.
Of course, one does not need to take it to such extremes. There’s a difference between being demanding and asking for what one wants. Something I really ought to learn, given my problem with eating out in France, and indeed elsewhere. I think I’ve only twice ever asked for a dish minus a piece of meat in France, and, on both occasions, the request was met without a hint of reluctance, incredulity, or even surprise. Something that rarely seems to happen to us in the UK. All too often, asking for something that’s not exactly as it is on the menu is met with a ‘we can’t do that’ or simply a blank ‘does not compute’ expression.

Perhaps we need to eat out in more upmarket establishments.

Anyway, in spite of my two positive experiences in France, I am still reluctant to ask for something ‘sans lardons’ (as everything invariably is ‘avec’ in Normandy.) It’s enough effort to get some French out, without asking for something different. Without seeming to be an awkward person.

My being reluctant to asking for changes to an item on a menu also extends to trying to find out if I can eat a particular thing unaltered, when I am in a non-English speaking country. This is more often than not true, even when I have sufficient language skills. My temerity, on occasions, has become too much for Tom, and, he has taken the matter into his own hands and said ‘my wife is a vegetarian. Is there anything she can eat?’ Although this really pisses me off, I can’t blame him. Many’s the time we have wasted an hour or so, trying to find a restaurant where we can eat, my blood sugar levels getting ever lower, my mood ever more foul. In a café Paris, Tom’s question was met with a disdainful snort, and a vague hand gesture towards a green salad on the menu. (If it had been Normandy, it would have had lardons in it, and maybe some andouille too.) On this particular occasion, I was especially angry with him for doing this. Partly, because I felt humiliated by the waiter’s rude, dismissive response, but also because I had really wanted to try the soupe à l’oignon gratinée, or ‘French onion soup’, as the English speaking world calls it. I knew that it wouldn’t be strictly vegetarian, and now that my vegetarianism had been brought to the fore, how could I possibly order it without looking like a hypocrite? Not that the waiter would care. But that wasn’t the point. And I suppose that, if I am truthful, that wasn’t really why I was angry. It was more that I had now had to admit to my hypocrisy to myself. I couldn’t adopt the ‘what I don’t know about doesn’t really matter’ stance.
I ordered the soup in the end anyway. It was dreadful. Greasy broth with a slice of overly toasted bread and a bit of cheese. Had much better in England.
In Tokyo, the outcome of Tom’s statement was equally embarrassing and, in the end, extremely uncomfortable, for very different reasons. Although it did make for an unforgettable meal.
The Tofu Meal.
We’d been finding it difficult to eat Japanese food in Tokyo, partly because it didn’t seem to exist in a vegetarian guise, and partly because I was loath to walk into a restaurant that had no English menu and ask if they had anything vegetarian. This was not entirely because I am a wimp about asking, in these circumstances. I just didn’t relish the thought of maybe having to walk straight out again, having been told that they didn’t have anything. This would feel rude in England, and I was very much aware of how much easier it could be to offend in Japan.
So I told myself.
So, one night, having hovered outside a tofu restaurant near Tokyo station for a while, speculating on whether it would be ok for me, Tom, once again, took the situation into his own hands, doubtless fed up with Japanese pizza and pasta dishes. “My wife is a vegetarian, do you have anything she can eat?” Or words to that effect. Tom’s request certainly seemed to send the entire staff into a fluster, as a waitress rushed off to the kitchen to consult in hurried Japanese with the chef. She soon came back nodding and beckoning us to a table. The meal that followed was to be punctuated by such overheard discussions, as they worried about each course of the meal, clearly taking my food requirements very seriously indeed. In fact, their concern to get it just right was embarrassing. They were clearly going to so much trouble. The antithesis of our Parisien waiter. There was going to be no fish or meat stock in this meal. No clam lurking at the bottom of my bowl of miso soup. The result was a meal that consisted of tofu, salad, vegetables, and broth, in various disguises, none of them too difficult to see through.
To start with, a big tofu salad, accompanied a platter of tofu, of three different textures, with a small side salad, with pretty much the same constituent ingredients as the big one. We were rather full by the time we had got through this, and not at all sure that we even really liked tofu.
Next, cubes of tofu (some of it was blue) cooked in three different ways on skewers, presented in a little 3-tiered wooden crate. By the time we had got through this, it would have been true to say that we were totally tofued out, and feeling relieved to think that that was it. We could just get our bill and get out of there. And not think about tofu again for some time to come.
But, oh, how wrong we were.
The pièce de résistance was yet to come.
Our waitress brought out a clam shell-shaped brass cauldron, with it’s own gas cooker, and placed it in the middle of our table. First, using chopsticks, she delicately placed some vegetables into the boiling stock – Japanese mushrooms, and a few others - I can’t remember what. Then came the tofu. Great big wobbling, flabby slabs of it. I really don’t know how the Japanese can eat so much in one meal full stop, let alone this much tofu. We were almost gagging on the stuff by now. The blobby blue stuff was particularly difficult, and we were running out of condiments to dip it into to make it edible. We were afraid it might be rude not to eat all of it, but in the end had to admit defeat. There came a point where even one tiny mouthful more would have been close to impossible.
Tofu desserts were on offer, but Tom settled for soya bean coffee. I swear the ‘wine’ was made of soya too.
We knew we wouldn’t be eating tofu again for some time to come. Which was a shame, as we knew that tofu was a Buddhist delicacy in Kyoto, where we were heading later in the week
Ok, well maybe this meal wouldn’t have gone any better if Tom hadn’t mentioned my vegetarianism, but at least he might not have had to suffer so much too. And I could have just not eaten the fishy bits.
He did it to me again in Kyoto, but this time the only suffering involved was me being hungry all afternoon, as I was presented with 5 small pieces of vegetable tempura, whilst he feasted on huge quantities of fish.
Perhaps the thing I really hate about Tom asking for vegetarian food for me, is that it takes away my ability to compromise a little.