IN PRAISE OF RARE BEEF…

PLASTICVILLE-USA

IN PRAISE OF RARE BEEF…

I have always wondered about the validity of the restaurant and hotel internet rating sites such as Travel Advisor, Yelp and Urban Spoon. Since virtually anyone can file a review I often wonder if the “yes” reviews are written by employees and the “no” votes are written up by a bunch of nasty internet trolls who just want to stir up the stew.

I am by no means a world traveler but I have been fortunate enough to visit many places in the good old USA and like everybody else I’ve eaten at some great places, some mediocre places and some lousy places.

Sometimes I take a peek on-line to see what sort of write-ups my favorite places get. Now having been in a place first-hand I know what the situation and the experience was. So it makes me wonder when after having dined at a certain place and found it to be pretty good, what happened to the poster(s) who write comments like: “sucks!”, “lousy food”, “rude waitress”, “bad service” and so on. Could they have come on an off day, or again, is it just some rude troll hiding in his momma’s basement with nothing to do but throw a few bombs and see what happens?

Without a doubt the most interesting “reviews” I’ve ever read come from the restaurant section of my favorite Villager website..Talk Of The Villages. In general form some Villager will write something to the effect that they had a good time at some restaurant, which will be followed by a chorus of boos from many others who will tell the original writer that they must be out of their mind because the place is lousy and they would never enter it again even if they were starving. Conversely when someone writes of a poor experience there will be an automatic pile on by the other side letting the writer know that they are obviously an idiot, because the place they are writing about is the greatest purveyor of food since God provided manna to the Israelites. And so it goes.

The one thing to remember when reading restaurant reviews and opinions written by Villagers is that what criteria any other person might use to write an opinion about an eatery is NOT the same criteria used by Villagers. Nor should it be.

Villagers are notoriously terrible towards anyone who provides services to them. They are absolutely brutally rude to everyone from restaurant servers to medical personnel. They will drive a server whacko with endless requests for minor items such as napkins, ketchup, water refills and so on all the way up to threatening nurses and doctors with bodily harm for making them lose their “Tee” time. They are a most interesting bunch.

When it comes to restaurants..after they have treated their server like dirt..they will call for the manager, demand that their server be fired for her lousy service/attitude/form of dress..and hey..”how about a free dinner because of the lousy service we got??” And even if the server hasn’t had to deal with most of that nonsense they are going to get a lousy tip. In TV they have never heard that the standard tip is now in the area of 20%. In TV when it comes to tipping..2 people eating equals a $2 tip no matter how big the bill is. If..for whatever reason..the server is serving breakfast the tip is often 2 quarters for 2 people! Not exactly sure why the downgrade to quarters when the food served is sausage and eggs instead of a burger and fries, but hey..I don’t even come close to pretending I understand how Villagers think. I am guessing that just one of them would keep an entire platoon of Harvard trained psychiatrists busy for the rest of their careers.

The funny thing about eating in TV is that the vast majority of restaurants are big-name corporate chains. Almost every major restaurant chain has a presence in TV. The restaurant chains fit in perfectly here because the mission of the chains and the mission of TV are one and the same. Perfect robotic Borg-Collective sameness. The Stepford wives fantasy writ large. The mission of the chains is that you will have exactly the same eating experience at no matter which of their locations you will choose. Your entrée should taste the same, and your overall experience should be EXACTLY the same whether you are dining today in Boise, Binghamton or Birmingham. It all should be the same. So since these chains are all singing out of the same hymn book how are they going to be different from the others? Everything’s in the Standard Operating Procedure Manual.

Recently a restaurant “review” was posted on Bitch Of The Villages and it had to do with the diner indicating that they would NEVER again darken the door of this particular establishment. Why? Because the man ordered a hamburger done medium-well and it was served to him…uh…medium-well.

I love beef. And I happen to love RARE beef. Most people don’t like it as rare as I do, and I don’t fault them for that. My mother tended to cook beef medium-rare. We didn’t eat a lot of beef in our home. We certainly didn’t eat steaks very often, and more often than not, the beef I am talking about was hamburger. But my mother would never be accused of serving dry, over-cooked beef.

I also got a bit of an education from my aunt and uncle. My mother’s sister and her husband were major league over-achievers and lived the high life. They had no children and they often treated my sister and I as though we were their children and gave us a good spoiling now and then. They ate and lived on a daily level that I can’t muster up even on a special once a year vacation. They often took us to very swanky restaurants and got us to try things we would never have the opportunity to try at home. I developed a taste for rare beef from them and have carried it with me all of my life.

But back to our poor put upon Villager who was mad because he got what he ordered. Restaurants for the most part will tell you that they will not be responsible for the outcome of a piece of meat if it’s been ordered north of “medium”. If you want medium-well or well-done you are taking your chances at what you are going to be served.

It seems that our Villager was upset because his burger was not juicy and had “no pink” in it. Well. DUH!!! You did order it medium-well. You cannot expect to fry a piece of meat until it resembles a Good Year tire and then expect it to be juicy with a hint of pink. The poor waitress in a moment of truthfulness told the customer just that.

This caused said Villager to stomp out of the restaurant without eating and without paying his bill. He went right home and fired up his computer to say what a terrible place this restaurant was and how uppity and arrogant the server was and so on and so forth.

The resulting torrent of comments all centered around the theme of why didn’t you call for the manager and have the server put on the rack, and get a free meal, and other ridiculous offerings. It wasn’t until you got about 6 pages into the thread did some slightly awake soul write the following..”Well dude..you DID order it medium-well..just what exactly were you expecting??” Hurray!!

Bottom line is if you just learn to love beef the way it was meant to be cooked..rare or medium rare..you’d never have to worry about your burger being rubbery and dry as dust. And you would have more time to gripe, complain and bitch about other things that aren’t perfect here in America’s FREINDLIEST Hometown!!