Foodie Foolishness

One of my closest friends is a 'foodie'.... meaning that she makes her living in the food/cooking business. In her work, she comes into contact with some of Toronto's most famous 'foodies'. What a lot of nonsense! (Make no mistake... I am not making fun of my friend's work... I respect her business a lot and she would be amoung the first to admit that the whole 'food' world is full of pretense and silliness, not to mention back-biting).

Anyway.... last Saturday four of us were to go out for dinner, and three out of four of us were interested in going to a steakhouse. We debated back and forth the pros and cons of going to an established chain whose name has three letters, or to one of the many 'fine dining' steak houses in town. Now, I don't eat beef.... so I really didn't have too much opinion one way or the other. While I am extremely suspicous of the abilities of any chain kitchen to produce anything but mediocre quasi-intstitutional food.... I am not a steak connoisseur. Besides, I tend to be far more interested in the companionship, conversation, and red wine than I'll ever be about the food. Suffice to say ... the proponents of the 3-letter chain restaurant won the little-debated debate.

One of the deciding arguments presented in this non-debate was that a number of 'foodies' had recently remarked that they believed that for your money the 3-letter chain steakhouse was better than said small steakhouse with the grand reputation.

HUH!!!! Shows what they know!

While I did contemplate the fish special at about $30.00; I decided that the chance that what I received I would feel was worth $30.00 was too steep a risk for me. I chose the combo side of 3 vegetables and a side of rice pillaf for a total of about $13.00. I figured if I chose something pretty hard to really fuck up, and the price was not too outrageous I wouldn't do too bad.

Well.... one of us had one 'overcooked' lobster tail for about $18.00; one of us had steak for about $30.00 they felt tasted 'old', one of us had prime rib that was "pretty good" for about $30.00. And of course, I had vegetables.

Well.... you be the judge.... was this good value for money?

Besides, for the first half of the evening the music was too loud and horrible and the waiter didn't offer to hang our coats.

On the plus side, we picked a pretty good bottle of $40 something California Merlot and the company was terrific!!!!