I’ll Have The Smaller, More Expensive Portion Please

There’s been a lot of coverage in the news lately about how overweight Americans have become. It’s carb this, trans-fat that, too much sugar, too little exercise, use this diet and that food pyramid and start doing a lot more of this and a lot less of that and on and on and on. It’s all too complicated.

Not any longer. While having dinner the other night in one of those trendy new eateries in town, I had a revelation. Americans simply love a bargain. In fact, real Americans feel that paying too much for too little borders on the treasonous – or at least the stupid – which, in a nut shell, accounts for why we’re such a fat and happy little country.

It started the moment the server person arrived with a flourish at my table.

“Good evening sir. May I start you off with a drink?”

A beer sounded good, so I asked for one of my south-of-the-border favorites. The man’s face assumed a look that indicated I had just wiped something off my shoes that had no business being in his restaurant.

“I’m sorry sir,” he said in a voice that clearly indicated he was anything but. “We don’t carry any Mexican beers. We do have a sparkling little stout ale lager with a hint of citrus flower and just a whiff of wheat barley hops that have been slow roasted in a clay oven over seasoned madrone. $12.00.”

I ordered one, just to prove that ordering $12 beer was an everyday experience for me, and I wouldn’t have expected anything less.

He returned with a 4-ounce glass of lukewarm beer that tasted similar to some $5-a-case generics. He hovered expectantly, as though he had brewed the stuff himself when he wasn’t busy folding napkins to look like flocks of Canadian geese, and seemed disappointed that I didn’t gush. He then moved on to the specials.

“Tonight, Hans Maurice Sung-Wen Smith, our chef, has prepared two truly succulent dishes to tease and please the most discriminating of taste buds. We have cheek of ahi that is rubbed with a single seed from an organic tangerine that was raised in the wilds of Mongistinstan, then sensuously kissed with just a hint of a virgin goat cheese, acorn shell, Tibetan snow water and pomegranate glaze. It is left raw so that the brutal heat of the stove does not interfere with the delicate swirls left by the little fishy’s unspoiled salt water home, and is served with a single artful twist of free-range carrot swirl. $79.95.

“We also have our tribute to the wild west, featuring a calf’s hoof flambé sprinkled with seven perfectly matched cactus thorns that have been hand-tossed in a rusted iron skillet. We then polish the rim of the plate with a piece of aged saddle leather to impart a delightful hint of sweaty working-man panache, and add two pan-seared free-range potato peels. $89.50.

“Both dishes include our famous hearty bread basket, which features a delightful medley of one full slice of Hungarian pressed soy and hand-cracked peppercorn bread, plus sampler crusts from our Manchurian squid wheat bread and our watercress and sun-ripened rose petal loaf. You can order a complete slice of either bread for an additional $16.50.”

I passed on both specials, which earned me another “what’s on your shoe” smile, and went with something I sort of recognized – some kind of chicken thing in a glaze made from 17 other things that I had never heard of but didn’t have the nerve to ask about and assumed were edible.

I also passed on the salad – not included, of course, but available for only $22 more, with a side of dressing for $8 and croutons at $1.25 each. I nibbled my bread crusts to pass the three hours until my feast arrived.

Finally, I watched hungrily as the server person floated proudly across the restaurant with a huge plate in his hands. He set it before me with a flourish, brushed a single crumb from the tablecloth – which irritated me, because I had been intending to eat it - and left me alone with my meal.

The plate was indeed massive, which highlighted the 2-inch square of chicken breast, the single anemic mint leaf and the four tiny pieces of watercress that were arranged like miniature green tail feathers. On the rest of the plate the outline of a chicken had been drawn in delicate lines of some kind of brown sauce stuff, apparently to indicate that I got only the best part of the bird, and the rest had gone into chicken strips at some lesser eatery.

Three bites later, I was done. I was sucking sauce off the mint leaf when the server person returned.

“And how did you find your meal sir?” he inquired.

“Well,” I replied, “First I put on my reading glasses, then I fished a jeweler’s magnifying loupe out of my pocket, examined the plate, and there it was.”

He didn’t find that at all amusing, so I maxed out two credit cards, settled the bill, and headed for the nearest steak joint. After all, when I can get a 42 ounce slab of beef, mashed potatoes, gravy, half a loaf of bread and a real salad for 10 bucks, it would be completely un-American to do anything else!