Last night, my wife and I went to an Italian restaurant we’d never visited. The hostess seated us, gave us menus plus the wine list, and in a few minutes the waiter came over.
Martha ordered the arancini balls (made with saffron rice!) and a side of asparagus. When it was my turn, I told the waiter I’d like to have the shrimp scampi, but wondered if when they make it, the chef completely removes the shell on the tails of the shrimp. He said no, so I asked if he would mind going into the kitchen and asking them to do that as a special order.
Off he went, and when he came back a minute later, the answer was no, they can’t do that. I shook my head in disbelief as I screamed, “It’s not that they can’t do that, it’s that they won’t do that!!” No, I didn’t say it out loud. That was just the frustration voice in my head (think Lewis Black in “Inside Out”).
This wasn’t the first Italian restaurant where I’ve encountered this practice. That’s why I knew to check first. But I still don’t understand the reasoning.
I’ve seen part of the shells left on in a shrimp cocktail, too, and it never made sense to me. You’re already taking off most of the shell. Why not finish the job? I can’t think of another food that, when served in a restaurant, has its inedible outer layer only partially removed.
You don’t make chicken marsala with the beak still on, do you? You wouldn’t prepare a banana split without removing the entire peel, would you? Please tell me you won’t make me shave the wool off your leg of lamb before I take a bite.
It’s different when there’s a big bowl of shrimp or crab legs you can serve yourself at a buffet (that’s why they’re called “peel and eat”). But when it’s in a prepared dish, mixed with other ingredients — and a sauce — you haven’t done your job properly if you left part of the shell on. Worse, you’re making me use my fingers to finish the preparation of my meal.
Yes, if you order a lobster, they bring you the whole thing and it’s up to you to crack the shell and dig inside for the meat. But I loved the way my late father-in-law dealt with that. When he went to his favorite restaurant in Maine, he’d order a lobster and request that they “take the work out of it.” Every time, they brought him a plate of lobster meat without the shell. With butter on the side — which he didn’t have to churn.
At last night’s Italian restaurant, I didn’t want to deal with the shrimp shells, so I changed my order to spaghetti carbonara, which looked good on the menu because it came with peas, asparagus, prosciutto, and a cream sauce. However, when it arrived, there was so much cream sauce in the bowl it looked like I had ordered cream of spaghetti soup. Seriously, half of the bowl was liquid.
Was someone in the kitchen mad at me for my outrageous peel-the-shrimp-all-the-way request? If not, has anyone in there ever tried their own spaghetti carbonara and thought the proportions were a little bit off?
Ah, well, I ate about half of it before calling it quits. By that time, Martha had finished her meal, so the waiter reappeared to ask if we’d like some dessert. We both said, “Maybe. What do you have?” He said he’d bring us the dessert menu.
Notice that when I typed the last word of the preceding paragraph, it was not in the plural form. That’s because the waiter only brought us one dessert menu. Again, why? We had received two dinner menus when we sat down, so why did we only get one of these? It turned out to be a moot point because they didn’t have anything sufficiently chocolate for Martha — and I was already done with this place.
So, we demurred, asked for the check, paid it, and walked out — knowing it would be the last time we went through those doors.