Eddie’s Food Grievances: Those Restaurants Where You Get Far Too Much Food

Adeline loves food, lots of it and often, both at home and out. Now, that usually goes well, but sometimes it doesn’t. In the series Eddie’s Food Grievances, she shares her bemusement. This time: those restaurants where you get far too much food.

It happened to me this week. Without asking, the waitress at the seafood restaurant put a basket of bread on the table. And not just any bread, but that crackly, fresh bread that makes you want to sink your teeth into it immediately. If you haven’t smelled it yet, you already know which aroma is coming next. So delicious, that stuff. I love this kind of bread, so you won’t hear me grumbling about it. Only, afterwards I ordered a little platter of something and apparently that was also supposed to come with a slice of white bread. The situation? I was in a seafood restaurant, but it felt as though I was at the baker’s. On the table were half a loaf of white bread and half a loaf of brown, and it was simply all a bit too much. What a waste!

Which brings me to restaurants where you get too much food. Unnecessary, if you ask me.

Painful Portion

Don’t get me wrong, it’s awful when you get a meagre plate of food somewhere. When you eat out, you should be well fed; you don’t want to go home semi-hungry. After all, you come to eat. But having to send half your food back to the kitchen because it’s all too much? That’s even more painful. Not only because it’s wasteful, but also because the kitchen brigade immediately thinks it wasn’t tasty enough.

I’m sure it all comes from a good place, but you can’t finish that gigantic portion of fried potatoes at home either, can you? So don’t do it anymore.

Enough Is Enough

Look, when there’s too little, you can always ask for some extra fries. For all I care, you can order another entire dish. No one will complain about that. But when there’s too much, you can almost picture half your pasta being tossed into the bin in the kitchen. The same goes for that bread. There’s no way they’ll put it on another table, because that would simply be disgusting, and so the rubbish bin is the only possible ending for that excellent pasta. While serving a little less would even be good for the budget. Just one more advantage.

Now I hear you thinking: then why not just leave that half loaf of white bread untouched? But even that may not be served again in a reasonably respectable restaurant. I think it’s wastefulness at its worst. It’s all terribly friendly of the cooks in the kitchen, of course, but enough is enough. Just ask whether anything else can be piled on top of what’s already in your stomach; that can easily save a whole rubbish bag of fresh food.

Also read:

• Why Some People Shouldn’t Be Allowed to Use a Self-Checkout
• The Most Disgusting Dining Scene in a Restaurant Ever
• Confession: I’m Buying My House Based on thuisbezorgd.nl