Handling Restaurants Like an Entitled Princess

“OMG what am I going to order at this restaurant there’s nothing on plan on their menu??!”

We can try to avoid restaurants, or only go to restaurants of our choosing, but eventually we will fail.  There will be a work function, or fat relatives in from out of town who reject your healthy eateries, or a first date who picks the restaurant and you don’t want to act like a freak about food.  What do you do then?

Don’t panic.  Bring a towel.

Just kidding about the towel.  But don’t panic.  The mental shift you need to make is this: a menu is never a list of dishes to choose from.  It is always a list of ingredients they have in their kitchen.

Say you’re low-carbing it and you want to get a salad.  You carefully peruse the salad list, and find one that seems close.  Then you have to ask the waitperson what else is on it.  This is that interviewing process that makes you look freakishly high-maintenance.  You end up telling them “no croutons, salad dressing on the side, no beets, grilled chicken instead of fried” and five other modifications.  Then what comes out of the kitchen will have honey-coated walnuts, parmesan cheese, and carrot shavings all over it, none of which you were expecting, plus the croutons will still be on it.  Do you send it back?  Fussy bitch.  Do you eat it?  Cheater.  Do you spend ten minutes moving the high-carb carrots off to the side of the plate?  Way to impress the boss, food freak.

It’s so much better to just tell them what you want.  If you want a salad, read over the available salads to see what veggies they have in the kitchen.  Then put together your own salad: “I want a salad of spring greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, and hearts of palm. No dressing.”  Guess what?  You order it that way, you will get exactly what you want, every time.  They can’t really bitch about it because you’re asking for cheap ingredients they have in the kitchen, and they’re going to charge you the same they would if they had to cover it in feta and bacon-wrapped foie gras.

My most common dinner order is a steak (not a fatty cut of meat like rib-eye, something lean), grilled, “no butter no oil no sauce dry spices okay, no sides,” and veggies like broccoli or green beans “steamed, no butter no oil no sauce.”  The steak could be chicken breast or fish, as long as it’s grilled, baked, or steamed, and not battered, breaded, or fried.  The veggies could be any veggies that the restaurant has in their kitchen, or it could be a salad.  To select the veggies I might scan the menu to see what they have, but I don’t put too much stock in what the menu says.  I usually have the best luck ordering my meat and then saying “and what can you steam for me?”  They quickly suggest broccolini or whatever they have about, and it’s a very short conversation.

By ordering exactly what I want and starting from the ground up, I avoid all the unexpected “treats” like a pile of mashed potatoes on my plate or cheese as a garnish.  I skip the dinner rolls or whatever other surprises might come out with my food.  Best of all, no interrogating the waitperson about what else comes with the food that isn’t listed on the menu.  We skip that entire conversation.

If anyone comments on my order, I can easily explain that I prefer the taste of simple foods.  It doesn’t have to be a thing.  The actual time with the server can be short, reducing the amount of time you feel exposed as a fatty making a fuss about food in front of other people. 

Bear in mind that you can become a skinny person.  Then you’d be ordering like this all the time, and it would just be how you eat.  Many skinny people don’t put a bunch of crap on their food.  Waitpeople do not seem the slightest bit surprised or unsure how to handle it when I order simple grilled/steamed food.  I have never gotten the slightest bit of resistance or push-back about how I should try it with the sauce.  Start eating like a skinny person now, and these habits will serve you in good stead long-term.