Restaurants redux

For Valentine’s Day I took my жена to a restaurant.

Alas, three times alas, I was not pleased. And I am pretty sure that I am not the only one in that predicament.

So why do people go to restaurants?
To me, the primary reason is to get out of the house and give the home chef a break.
The secondary reason might be the desire to dine in different surroundings.
And third, the odd chance of making a palate pleasing discovery.

Unfortunately, when you go to a neighborhood restaurant few things compare favorably with what you cook at home.
Most of the dishes lack flavor or are drowning in some “secret sauce”.

To avoid offending anyone’s taste buds, the kitchen deliberately underseasons every dish. Or that’s what I think they do.
The food is bland, bland, desperately bland!

I realize that taste is subjective, but within limits.
What tastes bad to me couldn’t possibly taste good to anybody else.

Last night, I chose “tuna ceviche” as appetizer.
Anybody worth his shot of Tequila knows that ceviche is basically raw fish marinated (cooked) in lime juice.
Well, in this so-called ceviche I couldn’t detect the faintest trace of lime.
The kitchen just slapped together a few pieces of raw tuna with a few herbs.
Tasted insipid.
Ceviche without citrus juice? Who are you kidding?

My second dish was called “Baja seafood salad”.
A bed of greens decorated with a few pieces of grilled salmon, scallops and prawns.
Not too much to say about the seafood, but the salad was totally bland.
Just grass! Would have made my neighboring cows happy.
Not much Baja in this Ensalada!

I understand that a restaurant, like any other business, wants to attract as many people as possible, but when trying to please everybody you please nobody.
A restaurant should specialize in a certain type of food and focus on people attracted by this kind of food.
And if the dishes demand garlic and spices, by golly, give them garlic and spices.
Nothing is worse than tasteless grub.

As usual, after this experience, I will refrain from eating in a restaurant for a while.
And as usual, in a near future I will fall off the wagon and return to one of these pseudo “restaurants”.

C’est la vie!

But no worries!
I am still hot.
It just comes in hot flashes.

Hasta luego!

Alain

Prisonnier

Doit-on être prisonnier de ses origines?

L’autre soir je regardais sur TV5 « On n’est pas couché » l’émission de Laurent Ruquier, et l’invitée politique du moment était Jeannette Bougrab.
Je n’avais jamais entendu parler de cette femme auparavant, mais elle m’a immédiatement séduit.
Elle est belle, féminine, moderne, intelligente et éloquente.

Bien que née de parents musulmans (père harki), elle se proclame athée et rejette tous les tabous de la société musulmane.
Madame Bougrab revendique sans complexes sa qualité de femme indépendante et émancipée.
Quel bonheur de regarder une telle femme, enfin libérée du carcan des croyances ancestrales !

De là ma question.
Doit on être prisonnier de ses origines?
Non, mille fois non !

Quelles que soient ses origines, il incombe à chaque individu de librement choisir ses idées et son mode de vie.

Je suis né moi-même (je dirais accidentellement) de parents juifs mais j’ai refusé dès un très jeune âge de m’enfermer dans un ghetto communautaire et claustrophobique.

J’aime la charcuterie et les fruits de mer (tabous dans la religion juive) et je n’ai jamais eu l’intention de me priver de ce que j’aime parce que quelques barbus l’ont ainsi décrété il y a quelques milliers d’années.
J’aurais pu naitre huguenot ou mormon mais le sort en avait décidé autrement.
Etais-je donc obligé de me plier par tradition à des préceptes astreignants jetés sur moi par un sort capricieux ?

Non, absolument pas !

Quand j’avais environ 12 ans, mon meilleur copain était le fils d’un cheminot, ancien Résistant et Communiste convaincu.
Je me souviens d’être venu un jour à l’improviste chez mon camarade et d’avoir vu une scène assez étonnante pour l’époque.
Son père était tranquillement en train de nettoyer un pistolet mitrailleur allemand sur la table la cuisine. Un vestige sans doute de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale.

Je me souviens avoir été très impressionné, et pendant quelques années j’ai été imbibé des convictions politiques de cet homme la.
Puis peu a peu, en grandissant, j’ai formé mes propres opinions et me suis éloigné de mon copain d’enfance et des idées déjà rétrogrades de son père.

Ne vous laissez jamais piéger par des « traditions » ou des croyances révolues.
Tout change, tout évolue et il n’y a que les idiots qui refusent de s’adapter à un monde sans cesse changeant.

Quels que soient vos ancêtres, si vous doutez ou n’êtes pas d’accord avec une croyance quelconque, rejetez la, sans hésitation.

Alain

PS : Apres avoir occupé différentes fonctions au sein du gouvernement, madame Bougrab est aujourd’hui avocat associé au sein du cabinet américain Mayer Brown.

 

Knock-knees

Appearance is everything. Any political adviser will tell you that.
Some guys were blessed at birth with a great body, abundant hair, straight teeth, slim waist etc. and just when they started to believe that the world would be their oyster, Shazam! the Almighty cut them down to size by saddling them with knock-knees.

Knock-knees are the curse of power-seeking people. It makes them look awkward and unmanly.

No superhero or savior-of-the-world wannabe can be taken seriously if he is sporting knock-knees. Imagine for a minute Batman or Superman with knock-knees…
You simply cannot strike a heroic pose (legs apart, fists on hips) with such pathetic limbs. It would be laughable.
And leotards don’t help; they magnify this pitiful flaw. That’s probably why many men are loath to wear this garment. You simply cannot bang your chest and utter a war cry if your legs don’t stand straight. That’s probably why Hitler never wore shorts.

The same requirement also applies to women by the way. Forget about becoming a cheerleader or Miss America if your gams don’t look the part.
Bad legs are a curse worse than death. You can save the world even if burdened with a big nose, but you are simply not believable with weak knees.

The only way around this problem is to conceal the faulty equipment as much as you can. One possibility for men is to embrace the priesthood. The sacerdotal garment does a good job in concealing the knees and that could explain why the Pope or the Dalai Lama have managed to be successful for so long.

For a woman I envision a long evening dress, the kind royalty is wearing. Queen Elizabeth indubitably owes her enduring popularity to these long gowns. I am not implying that she has knock-knees, but if she did, it would be the perfect disguise.
Did you know that Sarah Bernhardt had her right leg amputated? She smartly concealed this flaw with long dresses and was successful till the end of her life.

People running for the office of President of the United States, should be required to wear shorts during their television debates. It would definitely weed out the weak candidates and substantially shorten the pathetic primaries.
I wonder what kind of knees Mitt Romney has? If he had good knees it might have helped him to show them. Lederhosen would have been nice…

Sturdy knees inspire confidence, knock-knees don’t.  And what a fantastic slogan the right candidate could use: “vote for a man who is not weak at the knees”.

I don’t know what kind of platform this job seeker would promote (it’s not that important), but with straight knees, you can hardly fail to inspire confidence.
Never mind unemployment, budget deficit, the price of gas, etc…

Show me straight knees and I’ll vote for you.

Alain