A popular Tajik soup type dish I had while in Dushanbe last year. It was pretty tasty from what I remember, yet considerably oily. Photo: Adrienne C. Wilson
When off teetering around in some foreign place I do my very, very best not to do something to shame my fellow American citizens.
I may have failed last year.
While hanging out in Khorog, Tajikistan last year at a restaurant with my guide/translator and some Czech people we had met a few days earlier, I noticed some mold on the bread I was about to dig into. After hiking up and down the mountains the last few days I was the walking definition of famished. So I wanted the bread, but I couldn’t possibly eat bread with green, mossy, fuzzy stuff lining the crust. I had my guide send it back for some fresh bread. This type of behavior surprised our Czech tag-a-longs. Sending food back no matter how good or bad was just something they expressed was not too commonly done in the Czech Republic and they had to get used to American’s ways. (Not exactly how their comment went, but something along that line.)
“BUT,” I said. “The bread has mold on it.”
!MOLD!
M-O-L-D!
M for Mold
O for Old
L for Late
D for Decay
“We can’t eat that bread,” I finished.
I truly thought I had done nothing wrong. I wasn’t rude or over the top. I just wanted fresh bread. The waitress didn’t seem offended. What if it had been under cooked chicken? Everyone knows you can’t eat under cooked chicken. It could kill you!!! I would have sent that back too. No second thoughts either.
Well last night when I was out having conversation with a nice gentleman from Finland who is presently working in the Tampa area for a few months, I recounted this experience because it struck me as odd. He basically told me it would also be very Un-Finnish to EVER send a plate of food back to the kitchen. Excuse me? In fact he told me that in most cases if you didn’t like your meal you would just push your plate aside and tell the waiter YOU’RE SORRY, but you just can’t eat it. You would kindly thank the waiter (I guess for bringing the dish out), apologize more (I guess for getting a meal you dislike or that isn’t prepared properly) and then if you were still really hungry or whatever you could try to work something out in regards to getting another better prepared dish or a different one. I completely understand working something out with your waiter, but I wasn’t totally clear as to whether you still have to pay for the first dish if you ended up sending it back. Perhaps I didn’t get a clear answer because my Finnish guest had never sent a meal back.
So my question: Was I an “Ugly American?”
Seriously, I mean it when I say I’m not picky or a picky eater. If I were a guest in someone’s home I would try to be as delicate as possible if it were something I COULDN’T eat. In a restaurant in Tampa, Turkey or Tajikistan – I’m a paying customer. I want food I can eat. I am paying for it. This isn’t eating me up (no pun intended), but it just makes me wonder is that a European thing? Luckily, I have only sent two or three meals back between the U.S. and Central Asia, but what do other cultures do?
Is it rude to send a dish back to the kitchen in say, South Africa? What about Korea, China, Yemen, Australia, Peru, Italy, Nigeria or any other country in the world? Has anyone out there ever had a similar situation?
Food for thought?
on Dec 14th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
haha you make me laugh! I wish I had some insight for you! Regardless of where I am in the world, I’ll eat pretty much anything as long as I’m hungry and it tastes decent. I think that it’s important to note though, that despite being pretty reckless about my eats in foreign lands, I’ve never (knock on wood) been sick. I’ve never considered sending food back. If I find a rogue hair or other foreign object I’ll generally just pick it out and continuing eating. If I drop something, I’ll embrace the 5-second rule and chow down. But I think that if I had a bad experience and I felt as though my physical safety was compromised (as I imagine you felt with your mold disaster) my ways would change. I don’t think your actions label you as an “Ugly American”. It’s important to acknowledge and be sympathetic of other peoples’ cultures, norms, and comfort zones, but I don’t think that means you should compromise your own.
(By the way! I’ll make 100% certain there is no mold on your birthday cake!)
Oh, Tajikistan. Good times!
on Dec 15th, 2007 at 9:37 am
I’ve been pretty reckless eating around the world as well and while I’ve gotten sick twice (New Mexico: green chili and Bahamas: grio), I still look for new things to try. Obviously the two things that made me sick in the past looked very tasty and not so harmless, where as I recognized the mold as something I probably didn’t want to devour.
No mold on the birthday cake? You would do that for me??? You rock Allie!
on Dec 15th, 2007 at 11:45 am
We had a strange experience in Curacao recently but I’m not sure if it was the waitress that made it into more of a problem. Eric ordered a steak well done at this very nice place. His steak came out medium rare at most, so he sent it back. It was obvious the kitchen just reheated it and the waitress brought it back out, still medium rare. He sort of ate around the rare part and when the waitress asked how it was, he was honest and said, “not how I ordered it.” She responded by disappearing for the next 20 minutes. Someone else brought out our check and it was very much still on there.
I know Curacao is not know for their tourism hospitality, but what (nice) restaurant can’t get a steak correct twice and then expect you to pay for it when you don’t even eat it? Search me.
on Dec 17th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
I have seen your food pictures from across the globe. I am disappointed that you didn’t post one of the moldy bread. Was it eaten up with green or a little spot? Here in redneck country, I would send it back and expect THEM to apologize to ME!
Illene
on Dec 18th, 2007 at 11:01 am
Leandra,
I agree about the steak. Especially when it’s a nice spot and not Jimmy Joe’s low end Steak Shack on some random country road in Kalamazoo.
Illene,
I see you’ve got the spirit! It probably would have been a bit much for me to take the picture of the bread. It would have sent my guests into a frenzy – I am almost positive. It wasn’t completely moldy or I probably would have left the place. Just a few green speckles here and there along the crust waiting to shock and awe the center!!!
MOLD – ATTACK!!!!