I knew I was a bit of a food snob. But it really dawned on me when I was at this restaurant that I also practice culinary prejudice - meaning I cannot stand to eat with certain people and will eliminate them from my eating world. Fork is a very lovely New American Bistro in downtown Philly. I'm not a huge fan of palces that have both chimichurri and vietnamese lemongrass as items on their menu, but their ambiance was sumptuous.
My entree of seared sea scallops with ginger, fennel dust, wild mushroom risotto, spinach,parmigiano reggiano had perfectly just-seared scallops. They were sweet and succulent. The risotto was a bit too hard yet, but the flavouring was nice and subltey smokey to counterbalance the scallops. Maybe they made the rice harder as not not have that mush on mush mouth feel? Who knows....
My dining companion had the rainbow trout with cornmeal dust, roasted celery root, bacon, chipotle remoulade, haricots verts with almonds. A rather pretty dish to begin with. This is where my exclusive tendencies kicked in... his mashing of the food into disgusting pulps, huge gulps, and utter disregard for presentation or flavour made me ill. It was all I can do to not ruin my own appetite when seeing such a grotesque disaster next to me. I kept my eyes firmly on my plate. I wanted to scream, "Why bother going to a ncie restaurant if you're going to do that to your food?!!!!!" I mentally croseed this person off the "will dine together again" list. And too bad, as he's quite nice in other ways. Isn't it ironic that I, who value tolerance and diversity, cannot share a meal with someone who is not like me. It is something that amuses and shames me at the same time.
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