An Act Of Worship

And not a pleasant one at that. I have mentioned before that I do not do restaurant reviews. Oh I may have occasion to go on a rant about the chef vs. blogger/reviewer issue, the unfair nature of judging on a single visit or the silliness of arbitrary rating systems in reviews. I might even discuss disguises, but there will be no reviews. I just have no interest.

In large measure it is because I don't think you can do reviews without being able to do a bad review. Look, I have had bad experiences in restaurants and I have even walked out on occasion - but the people in restaurants work HARD, and often for not a lot of cash. I just couldn't do a bad review, even under circumstances like this.

Saturday my kids were doing an overnight at Grandma's Saturday, so that my wife and I could attend a Hunter's Hope fundraiser, with Jim in attendance of course. So we did some fun things. We stopped at the Lexington Co-op for some quinoa, among other things, and then to Delish! to see Deb and Stephanie, two old friends in the culinary quarries.

Then we decided to go to lunch at an ethnic restaurant. It had been well recommended by friends who know of our tastes, as well as by the News for a restaurant of this type. The place was packed. We were not impressed, and it was clear that we had made a mistake -- the stuff we ordered off the lunch menu seemed to pale in comparison to what others ordered from the regular menu. Oh well.

The punchline is that we get to the Hyatt, dressed to the nines, and find ourselves a mere two tables from Jim Kelly, local hero (ok, so he led us to four consecutive superbowl losses). As I am walking around looking at the auction I star to feel weird. After my second bite of salad I am about to biff (no it wasn't the Creamy Caesar dressing). I asked Trish to take us home.

Bottom line - I spent much of the next 24 hours worshiping at the porcelain altar. My wife, who doesn't get even those virulent strains of disease emitted from our nations elementary schools succumbed a bit.


Was it a foodborne illness? Who knows. But there is one that follows this pathway - short onset and a relatively short duration. More important, this particular variety is most often stems from something we both ate.

So, could you review it. Nah. More importantly would you go back to try the "real stuff"?

I think I would go for that - as long as I wasn't meeting Jim Kelly later. I still want that autographed picture and bears for the girls!