This week I am in Seattle with Brandon (yes he still travels to Seattle Monday-Thursday every week for work) as his cousin is getting married on Friday and I can work from anywhere.
Anyhoo, at the end of the day we usually go explore a new restaurant here in downtown Seattle. Tonight we decided to go to Trulio, an authentic Italian restaurant near our hotel.
Let me just say that after tonight's experience, it's a reminder that we are totally all American with no sense of culture for cuisines other than sandwiches and cereal.
As soon as we took a look at the menu, our eyes went cross-eyed with all the terms we had never seen before. Usually the description under the title of the food gives you a helpful idea of what is in the dish, but the description just made it even more confusing.
Now the waiter....I've never met anyone who spoke so eloquently and proper as he did - an air that matched the high quality and price of the food. Just talking to him made my IQ go down 100 points. He went on to describe the special of the day, and I just smiled, nodded and said "great!" as if I knew what he was talking about. I think he could see right through our fake nods and could tell we were so out of place and had no idea what we were doing there. The only thing this guy was missing was an English accent.
Giggling and still looking at the menu, another employee came over with an odd assortment of a yellow and white thing drizzled in brown stuff which was "compliments of the chef". One bite and I couldn't finish it. Our graceful waitor came back and said in a disgusted tone "Oh, not liking the cheese and tomato I see", and briskly removed our plates. Oops.
We decided on a dish, and it was the one that said "ribeye" because that was the one familiar thing on the menu. As our waiter took our order we went directly to the entree. He laughed and said "Oh dear it looks like we're doing things backwards. That's okay, what would you like to START with", pointing at the list of mysterious appetizers. We kind of paused and somehow found ourselves being suckered into picking something he said had "meat and cheese" which turned out to be a horrifying spread of meat that looked like it came from a haunted house. I tried to make it look like we ate the appetizer by spreading around the weird looking meats and other oddities to give the appearance that we had touched it.
Every time our waiter walked by, I was struck with fear afraid that I was breathing the wrong way or not looking intelligent, as we were obviously obnoxious in this fancy pants restaurant. So hilarious.
But no fear - dessert was a triumph as it was a chocolate/peanut butter/banana/caramel gelato....mmmmm. I know what that is! Success! This was a hilarious experience as there is nothing quite like feeling out of place, is there? I'm glad I had my best friend with me to enjoy the ride :)
