Ask Before Serving Someone Raw Fish

Tonight while Carter was out to dinner with friends and Russ is in Chicago I went out with a bunch of girl friends to celebrate my friend Sara’s impending birthday.   The place we went for dinner was one I have been interested in going to since it is an Asian tapas like place, but I should have looked more closely at the menu before we went.   Despite my restricted diet  I was not about to miss a fun night out with a great group.

The idea of tapas should be perfect for me since I can only have a small amount of what I can eat anyway, but the problem came in that none of the dishes are simple, clean food, but rather very interesting combinations that had many sauces, and starches.

One of my thinnest friends who normally loves to clear a bread basket sat across from me because she was having her insurance physical in the morning and was given a very restrictive list of what she should eat today.  An Asian restaurant was not the ideal choice for her since she was not to eat salty things, like soy sauce, no carbs, like rice, no red meat, like steak or pork (don’t believe it is white meat).  She asked me what I was going to eat and said she would just get the same thing.

As the rest of our friends enjoyed pork belly dumplings, and duck confit fried rice I asked the waiter to see if the chef could remake Ono Sashimi and take off all the good parts and just give us some green vegetables with our fish.  He was more than happy to accommodate us.  My food restricted friend said she would have the same.

When our plates of raw fish slices on little piles of vegetables arrived my friends said, “Is it fish?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Is it cooked?”

“Oh no, you don’t eat sushi?”  I guess I should have checked with her about that one little bit of information.  After eating a the tiny piles of shredded vegetables and two tiny bites of fish she declared she was still hungry.  I guess so.  We called the accommodating waiter back and found a shrimp dish that could be made into a chicken dish that fit her dietary requirements.

I guess I need to always ask the questions about seafood and eating it raw.  If it were up to me I would eat good raw seafood everyday.  But next time I really want to have it the way the chef originally designed it with all the sauces and the naughty bits.  Two more days of this very restrictive shit, then I hear I get to add an extra piece of fruit at lunch.  I really hope it can be a peach.