A Little Faux Pas

Last night, my husband took me out to dinner at a little upscale restaurant featuring American cuisine.  By 'upscale', I mean the type of place where you can easily drop sixty dollars on dinner before you even start adding all the extras like appetizers or drinks.  Now, as a rule, we tend to avoid these places because I have a strong aversion to spending enough money to buy a week's worth of groceries on a single meal, but we decided to eat there because we were in the mood for spoiling ourselves a little.

Our waiter for the evening was a gentleman who had moved to the United States from London, UK, and he had that delightful British accent I could listen to all night.  We had arrived at the restaurant before the regular dinner rush, so our waiter had some extra time to spend with us, and we used that time to get to know him a little.  He loves to travel but had moved to the US permanently because of a woman he met here.  Unfortunately, the woman had left him after four years, and he is now the proud but single caretaker of two dogs which put a damper on his traveling.  He hates the thought of leaving them in a kennel, so he is content to take care of them while working at this restaurant and staying, for now, in the States.

In spite of our conversation, we eventually had to order dinner, and, after a little deliberation, we each chose the steak.  There were, of course, some other very interesting entrees to choose from, but I'm not a huge fan of seafood and a lot of the remaining menu items were some form of shrimp or salmon.  There were other things too, but a nice steak seemed like the right choice and we settled in to wait.  Our waiter filled us in on the history of the restaurant and my husband recounted an evening he had spent there many years ago and how much he had enjoyed it then.

And then our dinners came - beautifully cooked and presented 12-ounce New York strip steaks with bourbon butter accompanied by truffle mashed potatoes and spicy fried onion straws.  It looked fabulous and we set about tasting each of the dishes, our waiter standing close by, beaming with pride at the way we praised the food.  It was an idyllic evening.

Until I made a little faux pas.  Still smiling at the waiter and basking in our new-found camaraderie, I asked him if they had any A1 sauce to put on my steak.

Oops.

His smile froze, and I swear I saw a look of horror flit across his face.  For the first time that night, he was actually speechless.

In the end, he brought me the steak sauce they made in house (which tasted suspiciously like A1 sauce), and I learned something.  Apparently, asking for a pedestrian condiment like A1 sauce in an upscale restaurant is downright insulting to the chef.  I had no idea.

Somehow, we made it through the rest of the meal (which was fabulous), paid our check, left an excellent tip, and headed out for the rest of our evening.  But as we left the restaurant, I couldn't help but have one last thought.

I am really glad I didn't ask for ketchup to go on the onion straws.