Plastic Food.

Had a very nice evening with some close friends last night, we went to a fairly local restaurant that we had been to before, where the food is usually good and the place has a warm and comfortable if somewhat quirky ambience. It also serves a pleasant strawberry beer, not to everyone’s taste it is true, but to which I am quite partial!!!

So after our usual muck up over the time we were supposed to be there, we “meeted and greeted” each other and settled down for a few hours of gossip and laughter.

I never have any serious problems selecting what to drink, food however is another matter and despite the fact that a large portion of any menu tends to be instantly out of the running due to the fact I don’t eat anything with four legs, I am still always the last to choose my food.

Okay, so the real reason is that I am partial to nearly everything else that is on the menu and oscillate all the time between old favourites and trying something new that sounds interesting. Friends, however, know this failing well and wait ‘til I settle on one thing and quickly call the waitress before I can swing back to another of my multiple selections for the evening, otherwise I would still be choosing when it’s time to go home!

Anyhow, we are well settled into our chatting and hearty laughter and the food arrives, now this slows the conversation a bit and we have the usual giggles and pauses over people having their mouths crammed with food at the point at which they need to be dishing the dirt!

So, pretty much all running just like it always does, when one of my friends finds a small piece of plastic in her tortellini, now the restaurant were good about it and did not charge for the meal and offered apologies and it will not stop us from going there again. But it did put a bit of a dampener on us for a while and it certainly got me thinking, yeah that does happen occasionally!

Now clearly it was part of the packaging that the tortellini came from, I buy packages from the supermarket that look just like it, 2 packs for £2.50, and I have to say taste pretty much the same. So what leaves a bitter taste in my mouth is that it really reminded me that the cost of restaurant dining has little relationship to food, cost price of food probably much less than £2, menu price £10!!!

However I am not suggesting I will stop eating out, the restaurant industry provides a huge amount of people with a livelihood and we all have a duty to help support the economy, besides I have already arranged to go out for a meal Monday night!