Restaurant thoughts

I remember going to nice restaurants when I was just knee high to a very large grasshopper. My parents wanted to give my brother and myself exposure to the "ultimate dining experience" plus they couldn't afford a babysitter AND go out to dinner by themselves. (back then we didn't eat much...but that fact was rectified BIG TIME in later years!) Besides, "fast-food" restaurants didn't exist then! (exept our beloved White Castles)
I remember the very formal tuxedo-clad waiter offering French Onion soup...and I couldn't understand for the life of me the difference in a French onion from an American one. And why put it in a soup anyway?

Years ago you had 3 salad dressing from which to choose: Oil & Vinegar; bleu cheese and thousand island. Now, all eating establishments offer a house salad (which is a combination of the previously mentioned dressings); a balsmic vinegrette (oil & vinegar); gorganzola chees that is basically bleu cheese with a higher price tag, sweet & sour this; and peppercorn that, etc. Then they give you 3 lettuce leaves and 21 little tiny vegetables that one cannot recognize, all mixed with the other non-definable greens of some kind.

Lately I keep hearing the term "fresh sun-dried tomatoes" as some fancy perk on the side of the dish or on a salad...when I ask on the server where they would get such an item when it has been overcast and raining for the past 23 days, they kinda look at me funny.

And did you know that scrod is not an actual fish? It is a fisherman's term for the first (white fish) catch of the day thrown from the boat...It can be perch or cod or any white fish...so when a server tells me their scrod is the best in town ~I wonder..

Lobster..my two nieces-in-law (see picture above..aren't they cute?) can eat 32 pounds of lobster or crab legs at one sitting without blinking an eye. Although everyone around them is blinking, as the discarded shells are flying fast and furious so everyone within 40 feet in the restaurant has to duck for cover as they demolish the carcasses. But lobster is the Rumke of the sea-world. They are bottom feeders and eat anything and everything rejected and abandoned (I looked "discard" up in the thesaurus.) Yum. I've always thought that it's just the butter that people like. Put the same amount of butter on a carrot stick, charge $21.00/pound and I'm guessing we have a treat to stand in line for ~ or at least where nice clothes to enjoy it and pay someone 20% to lay it in front of you.

Why is it that lately the fancy restaurants are serving your meal on a plate with of unidentifiable colored sprinkles around the sides? Is the food not pretty enough that someone got the idea to decorate it like a 3 year old's coloring book? Personally, I believe some chef accidentaly spilled some extra spices on a plate at a fancy function once and it "caught on".

My friends get upset with me when we go out and I start to stack the dishes. I guess it is ingrained in me to be "Mommy's little helper". What the heck is the difference since the busboy is going to do the same thing behind the ornate fabric-covered walls where there is a similar disgusting, noisy, disorganized kitchen that we all enjoy at home?

Give me the Waffle House any day. They don't care if I stack the dishes and they have food on the menu I can pronouce.