Joined
·
386 Posts
I was about to cook my Southern Thai-Style Fried Catfish that I had been looking forward to making and eating all week when the power went out! Bad storms going through Illinois last night. I waited 15 minutes but it didn't come back on. I had nothing to eat except leftover beet salad, but I didn't feel like peeing pink for another 3 days. What was I to do? Well, I really wanted a decent dinner, so I ventured out into the torrential downpour that I had no business driving in and went to a recommended local Italian restaurant, Tuscany.
I ordered a cup of soup since I was soaked by the time I walked in from the parking lot and the soup was okay although tasted somewhat like canned broth. I ordered a side salad which turned out to be mostly iceberg with a gloppy dressing, but that wasn't the worst part of my meal. For my main course, I ordered a Linguine with Seafood in a Spicy Tomato Sauce (can't remember exact menu name something Fra Diavolo). It came out looking quite good: lots of seafood (prawns,scallops,mussels and squid). There were,however, lots of suspicious small white bits. I took my first bite and my suspicions were confirmed. Raw garlic! I think the chef watches too much Emeril and believes Emeril when he says "30 or 40 cloves." Strangely enough though, it also had the bitter taste of burnt garlic (I've burnt garlic enough to know what that tastes like). Maybe the chef thought one would even out the other? I generally hate to stir up a fuss and call attention to myself, especially when dining alone, so I just pushed as much of the garlic aside and scraped off the sauce from each piece of seafood and told my waitress and the hostess that my dinner was ok. I probably won't rant about it now except that one of my co-workers came in with her family just as I was getting ready to leave. She ordered something else but had the same problem with the garlic. She actually told her waitress why she hardly ate any of her meal and she got hers free! Now I feel stupid since I spent over $20 and I only had water to drink!
P.S. I also had a very bad tummy ache most of the night.
I ordered a cup of soup since I was soaked by the time I walked in from the parking lot and the soup was okay although tasted somewhat like canned broth. I ordered a side salad which turned out to be mostly iceberg with a gloppy dressing, but that wasn't the worst part of my meal. For my main course, I ordered a Linguine with Seafood in a Spicy Tomato Sauce (can't remember exact menu name something Fra Diavolo). It came out looking quite good: lots of seafood (prawns,scallops,mussels and squid). There were,however, lots of suspicious small white bits. I took my first bite and my suspicions were confirmed. Raw garlic! I think the chef watches too much Emeril and believes Emeril when he says "30 or 40 cloves." Strangely enough though, it also had the bitter taste of burnt garlic (I've burnt garlic enough to know what that tastes like). Maybe the chef thought one would even out the other? I generally hate to stir up a fuss and call attention to myself, especially when dining alone, so I just pushed as much of the garlic aside and scraped off the sauce from each piece of seafood and told my waitress and the hostess that my dinner was ok. I probably won't rant about it now except that one of my co-workers came in with her family just as I was getting ready to leave. She ordered something else but had the same problem with the garlic. She actually told her waitress why she hardly ate any of her meal and she got hers free! Now I feel stupid since I spent over $20 and I only had water to drink!
P.S. I also had a very bad tummy ache most of the night.