Family Style

On Friday night my office had our End Of Season Dinner Out With Tips Given To Us Over The Winter.  We chose the New Sheridan Chop House which I had never experienced; the last two end-of-season meals had been at La Marmotte and The Bistro.  We had amassed $600 from generous and for the most part happy Owners of the Franz Klammer fractional ownership over the winter months and were were eager to treat ourselves to a nice dinner before we all dispersed for the off-sesason.  Here is a copy of the menu.

Our dining experience was nothing short of top-notch.  Friendly and welcoming hostess and manager, knowledgeable and helpful waitstaff, hilarious and entertaining conversation amongst us.  We talked a lot about our teen years and the approach our parents took, sometimes the comparison of two households with divorced parents.  The six of us work really well together in our little office and it is always nice to get out and celebrate our success as a group at the end of good season. 

And you can see from the menu that it is a steak house - huge, juicy slabs of meat make up most of the entree items, with sides of greens and starches. 

Here is what I have (finally) accepted about myself: I don't like sharing food.  And here is how it played out.

We all sit down, chit-chatting and getting settled in, ordering beverages and starting to look at the menu.  I immediately notice that one of the appetizer offerings is...my favorite food, the endlessly pleasing macaroni and cheese!  After surveying the salads, all of which look good, I decide that I can forgo a salad and treat myself to the mac-n-cheese, knowing that a salad AND an appetizer will be too much food, especially as I have been sick this whole past week and my appetite has been sub-par.

Now, that was no easy decision to make, because honestly, everything truly did look good.  Because of my dumb shellfish allergy I find that appetizers can be a little more limiting - you tend to get the shrimp and crab and mussel offerings in those little plates, which eliminates lots of options for me.  So anyway, my conclusion was to stick with the old favorite and base my entree decision around that.

And then I hear, "Do you guys just want to get a few appetizers and share them?"  My heart sank.  I immediately piped up and said, "I'm getting the macaroni and cheese." 

"Okay, we'll get one of those...what else?"

It was the moment of truth.  In that moment I was certain of one thing and one thing only: I wanted more than one bite of macaroni and cheese.  I quickly debated my options.  I could keep quiet and suck it up and be an unselfish part of the group, or I could pipe up and take ownership of that damn mac-n-cheese (FYI: it has bacon in it) and make it known from the get-go that I don't want to share.

I chose door number two. 

I inhaled and proclaimed in the most disarming voice I possess: "I kind of don't want to share the mac-n-cheese.  Maybe we should get two." Exhale.

And it went over just fine!  We ended up getting a huge bowl of mussels, two mac-n-cheeses and two beet salads. Here's the tricky part.  When the coveted macaroni and cheese arrives, I realize that if I ate the whole thing, I would be too full to eat an entree. And here I am looking at the little square dish, heaped high and topped with crispy breadcrumbs, thinking, now I want to share.  Crap.  So I do the right thing and pass it around.  And then here comes the last part of the beet salad.  It gets placed between me and Heather, and I spend some time pondering if there is enough to divide between two people, or if that truly is a one-bite section of salad and furthermore, if it is one bite, who gets it? Me or Heather?

Exhausting, isn't it?  Can you see where I am going with this?  Am I the only one who feels this way?  Judging from the ease with which everyone else is passing food and eating, my conclusion is, at least at this table, yes I am the only one who feels this way.

I just want to choose my food and eat it.  Is that too much to ask?

By this point I was prepared for the next round of food with the entrees, and because it is a classic steak house set-up I know that you typically order your meat entree and then sides, which are usually large enough to share.  We ordered asparagus, green beans, brussels sprouts, gnocchi and truffle fries, which Gwen mostly wanted (she's pregnant, so anyone who's pregnant gets whatever they want, with good reason - one of those unspoken rules of the universe).

I got the butternut squash ravioli, so I expected I would have a few bites of something green and call it a day.  At the last minute, after all the entree orders had been given to our server, I noticed under the steak toppings section: Marsala-braised wild mushrooms.  When I asked the server if that was too saucy to be a side, or if I could order that as a side dish, she confirmed that it would be great as a side.  I am secretly thinking of that one little dish I can have all to myself, aside from my entree, which I am not passing around.

Our food comes, everything is fantastic, we are all very happy.  But then get this: towards the bottom of the bowl of delightful little funghi, Joel reaches across the table, picks up the bowl and asks, "Did anyone not get some mushrooms?" and here I am, the selfish bad guy at the table.  By the time they come back around there is a stem and part of a cap left.

Sigh.

I have spent some time pondering this dilemma, as this was the second time this week I was part of a group dinner, the first being a surprise birthday dinner at Siam, the Thai place, for a friend.  I was sick that night too, and I appeased myself with a small cup of soup before the 5 entrees came for 10 people.  It crossed my mind that I wasn't into sharing that night as well, but because my appetite was low, I didn't care as much, and I was invited as part of a larger group, blah blah blah.  It worked out find but it stuck in my brain that something was amiss.

In my ponderances, I considered the option that perhaps there was something in the way we were raised that has give me some "food issues" about the perception of the abundance of food.  I have since ruled that out.  Yes, we never had seconds, except for my dad who got any extras, and yes, my mom likes to pretend like we were poor and we really had to pinch pennies every week with the groceries, but the truth is I never felt as though we didn't have enough food.  We had homemade meals with desserts 3 times a day for my entire childhood.  So I have ruled that out.

The other obvious factor could be that I am just plain selfish by nature, and in these dining situations, that trait becomes glaringly apparent.  I haven't ruled this one out yet.

The third factor could be the burden of decision-making throughout the entire meal. I find it an unncessary distraction from an otherwise pleasant dining experience.  How much is too much?  Who gets the last bite?  How do we decide what to order so everyone is happy?  Who pays attention to when to pass something so that everyone gets some of everything? Please.

The last factor involves the concept of satisfaction.  To me, a meal is simply not satisfying if I have to navigate all that decision-making mentioned above, topped with my own decision-making of what I really want.  To top that all off, I find it incredibly un-satisfying to have a few bites of many different things.  I like to choose something and enjoy that item until I am finished with it.  I guess I am a food monogamist.  Perhaps too (not ruling out that I am somewhat selfish) sharing a meal requires me to endure a period of time when I am acting against a natural personality trait, and that is simply not enjoyable, whether the nature is an admirable trait or not.

As my wicked smaaht sister pointed out, true family style meals are served with huge platters of food where you get as much as you want.  Ahhh, perhaps that's it: as much as you want.  A blog entry from the overpriveleged white American.