It’s no secret that I love to eat. All my friends and acquaintances know my weakness, and maybe my strength, when it comes to food. I grew up as a child during austerity. Food was rationed. Many Israelis received packages of clothes from the “Uncle in America”, my family received boxes of canned cheese and soft meat. I grew up in a home with a food culture. A mixture of French, Italian and Oriental cuisine. I remember my mother, the Italian woman, late, during the austerity period. With a boiled potato, a little flour, a teaspoon of oil and salt, she would make gnocchi.
My father would go out on Saturday mornings to the port of Tel Aviv and buy for pennies the shrimp that would get tangled in the fishermen’s nets. No one knew how to use them and they were used as bait for fishermen. During the austerity period, when there was no food, in our house they ate shrimp and gnocchi. My late father used to tell me – shrimp and gnocchi are prepared in the same way: thrown into boiling water, and when they float, it means they are ready. Since then I have loved and appreciated good food. As a sewing student living in Italy, I learned to cook from my neighbors, and later I became a restaurant critic, one who usually visits Gently. Regarding restaurants that were “on the surface”, I tend to forget that I visited them.
Why am I writing this long introduction? Because the channels crowd the screen with cooking shows, food exhibitions, competitions dealing with food. The pantries in the cooking programs are packed to the brim with all the goodness of the country, valuable products and huge quantities. Did the cook drill the stew? Not bad. We’ll throw it away and start over. Food is thrown away in prime time, and many people who can’t afford to buy enough food to appease their children’s hunger – their eyes see and cry.
The judges taste and make comments and clarifications, sometimes gently and sometimes harshly, and sometimes it seems that the ego of the judges takes over the screen. Some praise the dish and some don’t like it. There is, and the response of a judge is met with the criticism of Ruthin from his friends. Gentlemen, there is nothing to argue about taste and smell. Philosophical excuses about textures and combinations will not justify such criticism.
There are judges who say outright that a dish is not tasty to them, but the fact that something is not tasty does not mean that it is not made correctly from a culinary point of view. This is conduct that gives legitimacy to a guest in a restaurant to return a dish to the kitchen because “it is not tasty to his palate”. If the dish is inherently spicy and he was not told this at the time of ordering, he will rather return it to the kitchen and expect to be served.
Likewise, if it is unreasonably salty, or if it emits an unpleasant smell. But if the dish was made correctly, and all its ingredients were specified on the menu, there is no reason to return it. This is impudence and an act that should not be done in my opinion, and if it is returned, there is no reason to be entitled to it. The customer , gentlemen, is not always right.