While food for survival has to be modestly content at the bottom of the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the enriched quality of the experience of eating definitely shoots for the highest level. I have never been a fast-food person, but equally less are my experiences with eating at really fancy restaurants. When I am invited to one of these, I definitely need an invitation as I would never go to such a place all alone, I usually end up getting lost in confusion. The confusion starts with "what's good to wear?" This is not for so much for myself, as much it is with the consideration of not embarrassing my host. Once in the restaurant, the mannerisms of the waiters bowl me over. First thing is the warm reception leading up to the dining table, full of a knifes and forks of all sizes, enough of weapons to rob a person. I never know which one to use for what. Then following this warm reception is the kindling of the romance on the table by lighting a candle. Ok, ok, just in case one got lost in the ambience and the dinner this romance resurfaces at the end as an additional 3 to 5 euros at the end of the bill for the table cloth and the candle.
But none of this really disturbs me much. I am a bold man, or at least until I see the menu card. The names of the dishes can be get really exotic to the point of hiding about their true identity. And then, on top of it, given the extraordinary culinary skills of the Chefs, the menu card might flaunt them by add what is called "Chef's speciality" to the list.
"If you really want the most authentic experience of this restaurant, you better pick this one", so thought a very wise friend of mine when he was at a fancy Italian restaurant in town not too far from Venice.
He had to pick between "polenta e manzo (polenta and beef)" or "mi sorprende (surprise me)". He decided to be a little adventurous and chose the "surprise me" option. From a pan of sauce with a huge fire under it delivered hot at the table to a plant brought all the way with its roots and, even better with the pot - nothing would have surprised him as much as the delivered dish "polenta e manzo" did. That's right the surprise was that there was no surprise. Clever ha??
Then there was a time when I went for an interview in New York. With the process going the whole day, this corporate was generous enough to offer me a lunch, with one of their team members who would show me the local experience. Although the thought that I could possibly be judged at the time of eating was a little disconcerting, I decided to shed my inhibitions at lunch, and eat to last for the rest of the day. Great. I was taken to the fancy restaurant which was recently opened by one of the famous Chefs in New York. Excellent. But after ordering two main courses - one a 100 ml of soup barely enough to wet your mouth, and the other a salad with 4 small cabbage leaves, one beetroot of the size of an egg, two walnuts and a cashew, I really wondered if quality was that much more important than quantity. I did not know the answer for it, but with the gut feeling that felt pride was over rated, I finished up all the crumbs of bread given to my interviewer.
The most recent one in my list of experiences is a dinner at an Italian Zen restaurant in Milano. "Italian Zen? Well, let's give it a shot." I was optimistic. The names of the dishes sounded like poetry, even better like ancient eastern wisdom. As one of my friends usually remarks, the distribution of the Chef's creativity between cooking and naming might be a little unbalanced in such cases. The usual suspects "Reaching equilibrium, natural state, tranquility, awakening, enlightenment .. " took the names of about 29 out of the 30 dishes, while the special spot was reserved for the dish called "waiting for Obama". He might be the Messiah with the power to change the current socio-economic situation, but does that entitle him for that one spot in the 30 dishes? May be yes. But I decided to put an end not just to the economic crisis, but to all the problems of humanity in general, and gave a greedy shot at the dish called "enlightenment". It was a very delicious soup of polenta, zucca, with fried artichokes, and the unlisted ingredient "a little bit of magic." Then I recalled the waiter and asked for the menu to check again what all went into it. In fact, "magic" was mentioned, not in words but in numbers, as the price of this high quality, very small sized dish which managed to whet my apetite for a real meal ! And then I also happened to notice the comment on the last page of the menu " .. the most important part of dining experience is the feeling the food leaves you with after you finish eating."
Anyways, finally I began to see the Zen aspect of the restaurant. I am not enlightened I am still my stupid old self, but they definitely filled me with nothingness.
Sunday 8 February, 2009
Sunday 1 February, 2009
vend it out
Life gets busier by the day, not because I do a lot of things, but I think of doing a lot of things and never work towards them. Leaving the reasons for this alone, any advancement in technology, that generously accommodates my laziness fits-in snugly into my life. One of them is refrigerator, which allows me to cook once every black moon (or new moon as some may call it) and the other is its companion, microwave owen. I used to worship these until I found at my university in California, a machine that vends burritos at any time of the day! I was so happy with the discovery that I could get the burritos even past midnight! That was nice. My awareness of vending machines extended from 'B'urritos. My loyalty to the family of vending machines grew with time as I saw different kinds of machines selling daily essentials, the names of most of them starting with C - chips, chocolates, cigarettes among other things like .. (recollecting ..) .. coffee, coke .. and it does not take a big stretch of imagination to extend the list alphabetically ..
When I drank successfully a cup of coffee from a vending machine, my Italian friend said I was ready for a space travel. I was not surprised to hear that - in case of space travel with a noble cause, which involves getting sealed inside a capsule which is barely bigger than a luxury car, away from any human contact and even one's own weight because of the gravity for over a month, one thing Italians would miss is a nice handmade coffee. Anyways, I am no connoisseur, just lazy and looking for practical solutions.
Just to sound a little bit more educated, I can name that even newspapers are vended by these machines. When I saw a vending machine in the Repubblica train station in Milan, I was taken by surprise. This wonderful machine vends books !! It is a nice way to encourage reading. Staying away from printed media is very high on the list of my lazy habits. If these books were in english in stead of in Italian, I would have nevertheless bought one of them irrespective of whether I liked it, just to boost the morale of the machine. Until I saw this machine, looks like I subconsciously believed that there were limits to the applicability of these omnipotent machines, but not any more .. !
When I drank successfully a cup of coffee from a vending machine, my Italian friend said I was ready for a space travel. I was not surprised to hear that - in case of space travel with a noble cause, which involves getting sealed inside a capsule which is barely bigger than a luxury car, away from any human contact and even one's own weight because of the gravity for over a month, one thing Italians would miss is a nice handmade coffee. Anyways, I am no connoisseur, just lazy and looking for practical solutions.
Just to sound a little bit more educated, I can name that even newspapers are vended by these machines. When I saw a vending machine in the Repubblica train station in Milan, I was taken by surprise. This wonderful machine vends books !! It is a nice way to encourage reading. Staying away from printed media is very high on the list of my lazy habits. If these books were in english in stead of in Italian, I would have nevertheless bought one of them irrespective of whether I liked it, just to boost the morale of the machine. Until I saw this machine, looks like I subconsciously believed that there were limits to the applicability of these omnipotent machines, but not any more .. !
what you see is what you pay !
As soon as I see something that might qualify for a partially interesting buy, I reach for the price tag. I had been a student all my life and it is a very natural instinct that I developed for self preservation. But it took me a while, a very long while, to realize that what you see is not what you pay !!
In the beginning I used to think that in the US, what you see is what you pay, up to the accuracy of the last penny. This might over load your pocket with lots of copper coins that you carry around, but I did not consider that a problem. Then I discovered the time of a "sale" which is like the harvesting time for a consumer - time to reap all the goodies. "up to 75% off", advertise some of the stores. The "up to" is in font size 5, while the 75% is at size 20?? Which generally means they may have one useless piece in the store which qualifies for a huge discount to the point of being free, but most others that a sane person would buy will be up to 25-30 % off. Not a bad deal nevertheless, ha? And there is a wonderful policy in the US - mail-in-rebate. Mail-in-rebate is a cunning cousin of the "sale" option. If you thought that with the careful choice of the fonts, the advertising for the sale is already deceitful, mail in rebate is worse. You buy the product today, for the full price, and if you can mail the rebate form in a 2 week window exactly 6 months after the purchase, you get back a decent fraction of the amount you paid. There are no catches in this offer. But the sellers count on one of the most unfailing faculties of humans - the inability to remember the exact date of purchase and the potential savings of $20 for 6 months. And usually the trick works!
In India, there are at least two kinds of places where one can buy the goods. One is in a street side shop, where you can lay hands on the dreams of a noted designer materialized as a wrist watch, a handbag or whatever else it may be, for just a couple of dollars equivalent. It may not work as the original should, but as long as it does, you can flaunt off your fancy replicas of imported products. In this market of fair trade, the marked prices mean nothing. With the indicated prices going up to ten times what you could buy them for, the prices are meant more for confusing the customer than for suggesting its worth. The rule of the game - haggle. This is a tricky game of psychology. After hearing the outrageous value attached to the goods, let's say you quote a price which is 50% more than its worth. The vendor immediately hands the item to you with a smirk that indicates his success. To be on the safer side, if you quote a price that is possibly lower than its worth, you will be embarrassed by the eyes of the seller which ask you, "are you sure you want to buy this, or just wasting my time?" in the best case and "may be you can not afford it, get away" in most other cases. I can not afford the designer brands, but the replicas, sure I can. So, to be a winner in this game, one needs to master the art of haggling by achieving the delicate balance between the price you end up paying and the worth of ones own self esteem.
The other places for shopping are luxury goods, could even be imported goods from other countries. (I just recreated a famous Bushism involuntarily: "most of our imports are from other countries". I decided not to correct my sentence as a tribute to the ex-Prez). The game of haggling here is a little bit more subtle, or respectable if one would prefer to describe it so. These places are usually small businesses, where one would deal directly with the owner of the store. When you reach the point of billing, ready to pay cash to the owner, you would ask him "is there a discount?. I heard the New year sale was still going on here in your store" (if its after february, you would appropriately use the name of the holiday which happened either in the past one month, or is approaching in another month). The owners are usually sympathetic, and they would offer you some discount usually, 5%, 10% or whatever makes them leaves them at ease. They might also say, "if you do not ask for a receipt, you could save 5% more)." It's certainly a gentleman's agreement. He sells and you buy, why bring the middle man, called the government in between to take the taxes?
Talking of taxes, Switzerland is a tax paradise. Everything is fair here. No need to haggle. And on top of it, there is no sales tax. In the first month of my stay in this wonderful country, I went shopping and had a bill for a perfect 100 Franks. I was so happy to see the exact number, without an adulteration by the 8.25% sales tax. I even wanted to preserve the receipt. But with a host of items in the bill, that were not-so-respectable for a public display, I trashed it immediately. But wait a minute, if there is no sales tax on the food at restaurants, how would one tip in the restaurants. That was a big puzzle for me after my first restaurant meal in Switzerland. This usually an unspoken tax, or tip as some may call it, is 16-20% (the generosity of the customer depends upon whose honored company our host is in). If it is 16%, the usual trick in California is to double the tax in the bill given to you, unless one wants to use the fancy "tip calculator" built in their cell phones. With this confusion about the tip, I was a little worried about the manner of the delivery of food, next time I went to the same restaurant. But as the code in Europe goes, it is just enough to drop in a couple of euros as a thanks. It need not be associated to a significant percentage of the amount on the bill. Although food is higly-over-priced in Switzerland (as are most other items), I still appreciate their sense of tipping which does not leave your experience at the restaurant with an unpleasant aftertaste.
In the beginning I used to think that in the US, what you see is what you pay, up to the accuracy of the last penny. This might over load your pocket with lots of copper coins that you carry around, but I did not consider that a problem. Then I discovered the time of a "sale" which is like the harvesting time for a consumer - time to reap all the goodies. "up to 75% off", advertise some of the stores. The "up to" is in font size 5, while the 75% is at size 20?? Which generally means they may have one useless piece in the store which qualifies for a huge discount to the point of being free, but most others that a sane person would buy will be up to 25-30 % off. Not a bad deal nevertheless, ha? And there is a wonderful policy in the US - mail-in-rebate. Mail-in-rebate is a cunning cousin of the "sale" option. If you thought that with the careful choice of the fonts, the advertising for the sale is already deceitful, mail in rebate is worse. You buy the product today, for the full price, and if you can mail the rebate form in a 2 week window exactly 6 months after the purchase, you get back a decent fraction of the amount you paid. There are no catches in this offer. But the sellers count on one of the most unfailing faculties of humans - the inability to remember the exact date of purchase and the potential savings of $20 for 6 months. And usually the trick works!
In India, there are at least two kinds of places where one can buy the goods. One is in a street side shop, where you can lay hands on the dreams of a noted designer materialized as a wrist watch, a handbag or whatever else it may be, for just a couple of dollars equivalent. It may not work as the original should, but as long as it does, you can flaunt off your fancy replicas of imported products. In this market of fair trade, the marked prices mean nothing. With the indicated prices going up to ten times what you could buy them for, the prices are meant more for confusing the customer than for suggesting its worth. The rule of the game - haggle. This is a tricky game of psychology. After hearing the outrageous value attached to the goods, let's say you quote a price which is 50% more than its worth. The vendor immediately hands the item to you with a smirk that indicates his success. To be on the safer side, if you quote a price that is possibly lower than its worth, you will be embarrassed by the eyes of the seller which ask you, "are you sure you want to buy this, or just wasting my time?" in the best case and "may be you can not afford it, get away" in most other cases. I can not afford the designer brands, but the replicas, sure I can. So, to be a winner in this game, one needs to master the art of haggling by achieving the delicate balance between the price you end up paying and the worth of ones own self esteem.
The other places for shopping are luxury goods, could even be imported goods from other countries. (I just recreated a famous Bushism involuntarily: "most of our imports are from other countries". I decided not to correct my sentence as a tribute to the ex-Prez). The game of haggling here is a little bit more subtle, or respectable if one would prefer to describe it so. These places are usually small businesses, where one would deal directly with the owner of the store. When you reach the point of billing, ready to pay cash to the owner, you would ask him "is there a discount?. I heard the New year sale was still going on here in your store" (if its after february, you would appropriately use the name of the holiday which happened either in the past one month, or is approaching in another month). The owners are usually sympathetic, and they would offer you some discount usually, 5%, 10% or whatever makes them leaves them at ease. They might also say, "if you do not ask for a receipt, you could save 5% more)." It's certainly a gentleman's agreement. He sells and you buy, why bring the middle man, called the government in between to take the taxes?
Talking of taxes, Switzerland is a tax paradise. Everything is fair here. No need to haggle. And on top of it, there is no sales tax. In the first month of my stay in this wonderful country, I went shopping and had a bill for a perfect 100 Franks. I was so happy to see the exact number, without an adulteration by the 8.25% sales tax. I even wanted to preserve the receipt. But with a host of items in the bill, that were not-so-respectable for a public display, I trashed it immediately. But wait a minute, if there is no sales tax on the food at restaurants, how would one tip in the restaurants. That was a big puzzle for me after my first restaurant meal in Switzerland. This usually an unspoken tax, or tip as some may call it, is 16-20% (the generosity of the customer depends upon whose honored company our host is in). If it is 16%, the usual trick in California is to double the tax in the bill given to you, unless one wants to use the fancy "tip calculator" built in their cell phones. With this confusion about the tip, I was a little worried about the manner of the delivery of food, next time I went to the same restaurant. But as the code in Europe goes, it is just enough to drop in a couple of euros as a thanks. It need not be associated to a significant percentage of the amount on the bill. Although food is higly-over-priced in Switzerland (as are most other items), I still appreciate their sense of tipping which does not leave your experience at the restaurant with an unpleasant aftertaste.
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