Friday, July 2, 2010

The Last Supper

That is what my mom has been calling it, considering we're all going to be on diets of some sort for the next year or so.

My brother finally proposed to his girlfriend of three years this past weekend and on Tuesday my parents and I went out to dinner with the happy couple and the fiance's parents.  Did I spell that correctly?  I never know.  Anyhow, my brother made the reservations and let us know a day in advance.

I decided, as I usually do, to check out the menu online and be well prepared.  I have found this makes the evening go far more smoothly because I foresee any kinks and issues that may arise before they actually happen.

This menu had a few things I thought I might be able to eat--salads without the cheese, the soup if it was made with a vegetable broth, and the spaghetti marinara if the sauce was dairy-free.  But soups and salads and noodles with marinara sauce can be pretty boring, especially when you're out celebrating your brother's engagement.  So, I decided to give the restaurant a call.  What if the cheese was already mixed into the salads, the soup had a chicken broth, and the marinara sauce had parmesan sprinkled in?  Better safe than sorry, right?  The glory of cliches.

The person who picked up was very bubbly and helpful.  She was actually going to put me on with the chef himself.  According to said person, several vegans had been in recently and the chef prepared something special for them.  Unfortunately the chef was on a conference call, but he told the girl I was talking to that all I had to do was talk to my server--vegans come into the restaurant all the time and there are several options of what he can do for me.

I hung up the phone with a big smile on my face.  I know chefs aim to please because that is how they get customers and thus make a living, but for some reason I felt as if this was out of the ordinary.  I expected something along the lines of "We can take meat or cheese of anything on the menu" or for the girl on the phone to suggest the salads, soup, or spaghetti marinara.  I was pumped!

Skip to the restaurant with everyone sitting around, giddy with excitement over the idea of an upcoming wedding.

And I ask the waiter about vegan options.

Waiter: You can order anything on the menu and the chef will make it without dairy for you.

Umm.  Okay.  That was nothing like what I was expecting to hear.  So I investigate the menu further while he gives us another moment and there is nothing on the menu other than those few options I listed before and meat, meat, and meat.

Waiter: Have you decided on something?

Me: Well, there's really nothing for me to choose from because everything is meat.  So if I asked you to take dairy out, you'd have to take meat out too and it would be a pile of nothing.

Waiter: Oh, you don't eat meat.

Me: No, I'm a vegan.  I don't eat meat, dairy, or eggs.

Waiter: Hmm.  What can we do.

(My mom is trying to talk over us through this and the waiter is paying no attention to her.)

Me: Can't you just have the chef make some pasta with vegetables in some olive oil or something?

Waiter: You could order (lists a bunch of nonsense) or the marinara, but I think that has dairy.

Me: Then I won't eat it.

Waiter: We could do pasta with vegetables.  Would you like that?

Me: That would be great...

And he proceeded to, in a more garbled way than I ever thought possible, figure out what vegetables to put with the pasta (broccoli and asparagus and seasonal veggies).

Mom: He just wanted to be the one to figure it out.

Yea, not impressive.

So when the food came out, mine was a plate of noodles with broccoli and asparagus tossed in olive oil, and a side of seasonal veggies.  Huh?  It tasted good.  Nothing spectacular.  The rest of the night the waiter tried to sprinkle wit into his service.

Part of me wants to contact the restaurant and tell them the story.  Part of me wonders what good this would do considering I was given a meal to satisfy my needs.  I just want the waiter to be on the same page as the rest of the staff and understand that when somebody says "the chef said there are several options" and "can you please ask the chef?" you should really go ask the chef.  What I really want to know is what those other vegans got to eat.

Now I'm hungry.