One Shining Moment, Bad Restaurant Edition

Zora O’Neill’s post about out-of-the-way restaurants, and the disappointments therein for guidebook writers, reminded me my clunker meals last summer updating the restaurant section of Fodor’s Prague. There’s a moment when the first course arrives at a restaurant and you take that initial bite. It's fraught with peril, shot through with make-or-break qualities. In a great restaurant, it’s transportative; you’re taken to a location, back in time, into a reverie or a memory or even into your special-happy-schnitzel place.

Alas, going to two to four restaurants a day, transportative moments are few and far between. Sometimes when that plate is parked the extent to which you are about to suffer—from mal-flavorage, lost time and lost money—is readily apparent from bite one. My clunkers included lamb wrapped in pasty shell quite reminiscent of an airplane entrée, cod and potatoes that tasted an awful lot like carp and potatoes, and paella made in an open kitchen I wished I hadn’t seen before I was served. Or after. Or ever.

Which is why when us guidebook writers go out of our way and have this happen, it feels exponentially worse. It’s a lonely trip back to base camp, stomach rumbling, prickly heat on the back of your neck wondering if the waiter noticed how you just pushed the food around on your plate with eating anything, irritated that the updating process hasn't advanced a whit. Next time, I’m stocking up on Luna bars beforehand. 

Comments

[Zora]

Thanks for the link love, Alexander! Luna bars should be the official sponsor of travel writers everywhere. They have saved me from some major misery--though obviously not enough of it!

At least you have the will to not finish your bad food. I usually feel too shamed to leave it on the plate. It's a very rare case when I just push it around--but I usually wish I had...

[Alexander Basek]

I end up eating it more often than not, too. I mean, we're writers. Just pushing the food around is a luxury for a bad meal at the end of the assignment only, I'm afraid.