Hotdogs and catsup/ketchup. What's the big deal?

In My Humble Opinion
81

No, I am not a gourmand. I don’t even eat that much. I am not really a complete gourmet either. I was raised a poor Southern child in an area where you can get great Southern food and barbecue but not much outside that. The fussiness started when I worked at a gorgeous, elegant mansion/small hotel in New Orleans and a manager took me under his wing so to speak and showed me how things worked. He was like Niles Crane except bigger and much more gay plus with a bad temper. He had names for people that entered and sullied the atmosphere with poor manners and heathen ways and I don’t think I can repeat any of them here. That really rubbed off on me as I learned how to do various place settings and fancy napkin folds while learning the art of pleasing customers while stilll keeping them constrained to the acceptable behavior of the establishment. Ketchup wasn’t allowed at all for any night functions for obvious reasons although there were a delightful assortment of New Orleans style condiments.

My wife is in the fancy foods business as I noted so some of this stuff rubs off by osmosis. She honestly thinks that most everybody lives that way when it comes to food and the depth of that delusion sometimes makes me forget as well. In any case, flaunting civility may make someone feel like a rebel or even superior but, sadly, it is the result of ignorance not just in terms of a rote command of the rules of polite society but also a lack of innate humbleness and self-respect. Pride in uncouth behavior is an attack on not only society but also oneself.
I am ashamed to say I was once that way too and I couldn’t see it within myself just like I know many others can’t.

Ketchup on a hotdog may be marginal but it is a slippery slope. The next thing you know, you are out to eat with a prospective employer and the habit of making ungodly flavor pairings can’t be constrained and your delightful lunch becomes a chemistry set right before your companion’s eyes. Rest assured that nothing will be said but it can’t help but be noted.

The International Fancy Food show starts in NYC this weekend if anyone is interested.

82

It indicates nothing of the sort. You’re assuming negative attributes about personality, upbringing, and lifestyle because it pleases you to do so.

And you start so well! Your screening process before inviting guests over for a nice dinner makes perfect sense. You know Aunt Selma from the Simpson’s who had the bottle rocket go up her nose, so everything tastes like cardboard? That’s kinda like how I am, except I come by it naturally, having not had the need for a small firework to trigger the insensitivity of my nose and tongue. I have, in fact, the most unsophisticated palate of anyone I know, and to serve me expensive foods would be pointless. Should you ever have the misfortune of inviting someone like me over for dinner (maybe for business, since it obviously wouldn’t be a social call), a “shitty sausage” microwaved and served with plenty of ketchup would be perfectly sufficient. Don’t break out the good stuff, because it would waste both your time and mine.

My tongue doesn’t have any IQ to begin with, so you needn’t worry about the ketchup “stealing” it.

So why your need to feel so “civilized”? You arrogantly assume that your ways are somehow more sophisticated and polite and respectable. “Pride in uncouth behavior is an attack on not only society but also oneself.” Please. You get pitted for this nonsense because your statements are ridiculously conceited and absurd. Your own preferences are not some objective standard suitable for judging all human interaction. It’s completely understandable that you wouldn’t want to invite me over. I wouldn’t want to invite you over, either, so that evens out nicely. But when you arrogate unto yourself a notion of superiority, you’d better expect that people will call you out.

And you don’t even stop there. The “potential employer” gambit always follows closely behind the hypothetical “dinner party” in these threads, but the arguments never make any sense. If any potential employer of mine is considering whether or not to hire me, an astonishingly wonderful, brilliant, and productive worker (or so I like to delude myself), and they decide against it because my tastebuds don’t function as well as theirs, then that employer is stupid. My own job has nothing to do with food, no wining and dining customers for me, and any employer who can’t help but judge based on that criterion is an incompetent and should be replaced by someone capable of determining real performance in their applicants.

Feel free to “note” what I eat. Indifferent as I am to food, I won’t pay the slightest attention to the chemistry on your plate, so it’ll be a one-way judgment. Feel free, too, to make negative judgments about my “upbringing” based on no substantive grounds. You’re free to make hasty conclusions about others with no real information.

But it might behoove you to understand the reason that people like me are so totally indifferent to your precious dining customs. Why in the world would I bother with the nine piece place setting when the end result is, for me, nothing more than the hassle of recharging my body yet again? It’s not healthy, I know, but I miss a lot of meals because it doesn’t occur to me that I should eat. I’m too involved doing more important things.

I’m not knocking foodies here, either. They fascinate me. One of my favorite Cafe Society threads is “Ordering a Steak Well Done: Unsophisticated?” The patient explanations of the people in that thread who loved food were truly astonishing. It’s like they were building a complex chemistry problem. I never knew that medium-rare was the best choice to preserve the characteristics of quality cuts of steak, just as I never knew that ketchup drowned out other tastes until I read Cecil’s column about hot-dogs. How could I have known? I’m not built that way.

The people in that steak thread have an attitude that you lack. They eat for sheer joy, and most all of them didn’t care how others ordered their steaks. Well-done? No problem! To each their own. They just wanted the well-done people to understand the mechanics of cooking a piece of meat for so long. They accomplished their job brilliantly. It didn’t change how I order my steak, but it did give me a better understanding of their perspective of the world.

Your failure to emulate their fine example says nothing about the “manners” or “civility” of your targets. It says everything about you.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I forgot to eat breakfast this morning, so now I’m gonna microwave some fishsticks. I eat them plain, by the way. I don’t even bother with ketchup.

83

I read an anecdote once about Henry Ford and job applicants. As the story goes, Henry would take the candidates out to lunch or dinner, and he would observe how they ate their meals. If they salted & peppered their food before tasting it, he wouldn’t hire them. Why? Because they had demonstrated that they start out assuming the worst. They were a) “fixing” the food without first tasting it and determining whether or not it indeed needed “fixing”, and b) they were “fixing” it their way without regard to whether or not it was the appropriate “fix”. To Henry, this was an indication that the candidate was likely to do the same on the job.

I’ve seen the same thing myself, with my father. My mom, when I was a kid, was a very unimaginative cook. Most of her dishes were extremely bland. Because of that, my dad added lots of pepper at the table, not because he loved the taste of pepper so much, but simply to add some flavor to the food. And that was fine, at home. But he would do the same thing in restaurants, and in other people’s homes. Once I became a professional cook, I came to understand why this would be insulting. Here I’ve taken the time and made the effort to prepare a flavorful meal, and this guy stomps on my hard work by immediately drowning out the flavor I worked to create, without bothering to sample it first. Why did he do it? Habit, pure and simple. He’s grown accustomed to flavorless food and so he automatically assumes that he needs to “fix” everything before it goes into his mouth.

The most dramatic example I’ve seen of this kind of thing was when I was cooking at the local men’s homeless shelter. I’d cooked up a batch of biscuits and gravy, and I accidentally went a little heavy on the pepper when I made the gravy but there wasn’t time to fix it. When I was dishing it up to the homeless guys, I warned each of them that there was more pepper than usual in the gravy, so they should taste it before they add more. But most of them were so accustomed to bland food from shelters and soup kitchens that they immediately smothered it with even more pepper, ignoring my advice. Most of them wished they had listened!

Is there indeed some carryover into the workplace? I believe there is. My dad did great during most of his working life, but his entire career was spent working for the government in one way or another. He did four years in the US Marines, and from there he went almost directly to working for the Washington State Patrol, where he stayed for the next 36 years. Now that he’s retired, he works part time in the private sector for a corporate chain store. From the stories he’s told about that job, he sure seems to already know better ways to do just about everything, despite his short time on the job. Doesn’t go over very well :wink:

84

Well stated, Kendall Jackson. My mother liked her steaks well done. Really well done. It really pissed off my father when waiters would give her grief about it. We walked out of restaurants twice because the cook refused to “ruin” a perfectly good steak.

If it’s the way she wants to eat it, then you’re not ruining it. You’re providing what your customer wants, and in both of those cases, getting paid well for it.

85

OTOH, if I was running the restaurant, I’d tell your folks that we don’t serve quality meat “well-done” and suggest that the Denny’s down the street might be able to accomodate them. I’d take the loss of a customer or two rather than ruin a good steak.

Calvin Trillan tells the story of how Zero Mostel once threw a friend of his out of a noted deli in New York City, publically, because the fellow ordered a slice of Angel-Food cake and a glass of milk. I feel Zero’s pain. The customer isn’t always right.

86

That is correct. There is a huge misconception around that businesses exist to please everyone no matter what they demand and that was probably inspired by the worst catchphrase ever. Businesses exist to make money first and foremost, to serve the overall business interest second, and to please the owner and staff third.

Trying to please every customer is a common and admirable way to accomplish those goals but variations on it exist to fit the needs of the business. Some exclusive nightclubs won’t even let most potential customers in because that is their business model. Likewise, Southwest Airlines will not tolerate abuse of staff by customers because it knows that keeping its staff happy is more important than losing a few boorish customers which tend to make other passengers uncomfortable anyway.

A restaurant that prides itself on the quality of its meat may see a customer that wants a steak cooked well-done the same way an artist views a potential customer that wants to commision a painting of dogs playing poker. It isn’t appropriate and it is contrary to the business model. Customers that want a bottle of Heinz to put on their steak or jambalaya really shouldn’t be in a top restaurant in New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, or Chicago unless they are willing to adapt and learn. These places don’t want to encourage them as repeat customers anyway because it is contrary to business goals.

87

Out of curiosity, what ARE you supposed to order with angel-food cake?

88

Angel-food cake with white milk is fine, it was where he ordered it that drove Mostel nuts. Trillin relates the story in either American Fried or Alice, Let’s Eat. I’ll try to find the exact quote and location.

eta: Found it. It’s in American Fried and was at Russ & Daughters appetizer store on Houston St.

89

You (and Shagnasty) simply don’t get it. You’d really turn away a full table of patrons and lose the income from a half-dozen dinners (and alienate them forever), simply because you’re too much of a snob to cook a steak the way one of the diners wants it? You think the other five people want Denny’s food because one of them likes well-done steak?

If a cook or manager working for me pulled a snotty attitude like that, he’d be fired on the spot.

I own a bookstore. How long do you think I’d be in business if I refused to sell romance novels or westerns or anything that wasn’t (raise nose 2" here) literature? How long would the bar down the street survive if it didn’t have its two taps of (shudder) Bud and Bud Lite along with the 20 taps of good craft-brewed beers?

People eat in groups, and failing to serve one of them–or actually insulting them–will piss off the whole group. And what does it gain you? It puts another notch in your snotty “I know good food better than you do” stick. Why you would do this is completely beyond my comprehension.

(Shagnasty, your artist example doesn’t fit. We’re talking about leaving the steak on for another five minutes, which nobody else will notice, not spending weeks on a commission that will hang with your name on it somewhere.

90

Actually, I’d bet that three of the other five people would be thinking “Thank Og, we don’t have to put up with that leather that Phil always orders, and then be forced to watch him drown it in ketchup. I think I’ll tell my friends about this place. Maybe schedule that birthday dinner for Uncle Lou here…”

91

That sounds like a great niche business with an in-joke attached. Just bring in your hopeless friends/family/coworkers and let the place do the condescension and correction for you. There could even be a counselling room and mini finishing school in the back.

92

Silenus, I don’t know if you remember but I outlined a very similar real-life scenario here a couple of years ago and it caused a huge blowup that went on for hundreds of posts. It was brother against brother. There are three things you should never bring up with polite company: politics, religion, and issues surrounding milk orders.

93

So next time I dine with the Boss, stick to talking about circumcision, declawing cats and the Yankees. Got it.

Oh, wait. You said no religion. So circumcision, declawing cats and immigration.
As a correction to my story above, upon rereading the passage, it wasn’t Russ & Daughters but an un-named kosher dairy on upper Broadway where the sin was committed. Mostel likened it to alking into Russ & Daughters and asking them to open a can of tuna for you.

94

As long as I’m on ACBG’s “wiener” that’s all that matters. :smiley: This children is why we do vanity searches.

Ok, as to hotdogs, ketchup is an abomination unto hotdogs. Do we understand that? We do? Good!*

*Of course this is from somebody who eats hotdogs from a local hotdog place that are, to be heh frank quite scary things. They are chili/cheese/onion/mustard/ogonlyknowswhatkindofmeat dogs. The dang things are soooooo good! However, they must never ever be eaten indoors. :eek:

95

Why would there even be ketchup in your house for someone to use?

96

That is an excellent question but I have two small children.

Some people miss the point of all this which is partially my fault by the way it is laid out. It is about being open to new things and being an appreciative guest as well as being open to other cultures. Those cultures may be domestic as well as foreign. It isn’t about formality either. It is just as offensive to try to eat crawfish with a knife and fork in Breaux Bridge, LA as it is to eat a steak with your hands in Chicago. I am referring to the people that sneer at new things and are determined to do things the same way they always have regardless of the setting. Those are the people I don’t want to go out to eat with and I don’t want them in my house or my life and lots of them have appeared throughout the years.

People tend to respond badly to negative stories. Let me give you a positive story. The coworker I have always been closest with is a young black female that works remotely. Her husband is a pro baseball player and she travels and works wherever she is. Until last week, I had only met her once in person a couple of years ago. She looks similar to Hallie Barry and has a new daughter a month younger than mine. She had to travel to our office for training last week and I got the idea to invite her to my house (none of my coworkers have ever been to my house before). Her mother and baby daughter also travelled with her and I wanted our baby daughters to play together.

When they all arrived at my house, I met her mother who instantly struck me as a very humble person of creole ancestry that happened to be correct. As the kids played, I talked to her mother and found out that she had literally never been out of a small area near the Louisiana/Texas border. I got her some white wine and she loved it enough to drink more than half the bottle. I offered her some fresh mozzarella, tomato, and basil salad and she loved it as well and asked questions. We decided to have an impromptu cheese tasting because she had never tried any of it. By that time, the white wine was gone so I took her to the wine cellar and let her pick out a bottle of red suitable for the cheeses. She ate and talked and loved it all. My coworker told me later that she said it was one of the greatest experiences of her life.

All of that came from allowing someone to show her something new. We enjoyed it greatly and so did they. Compare that to the guest that turns their nose up at the slightest hint of something foreign and you can see where the problem comes in. This doesn’t apply just to food but also to music, art, NASCAR, and pro wrestling. It is a crass mentality and the job of the guest is to allow themselves to be entertained and experience what other people enjoy as much as it is for the host to cater to the guest.

97

Right. Sure. Of course. Three of five people, seated comfortably at a fine restaurant, sipping their favorite red, chatting amiably with their buddy Phil, maybe razzing him lightly because of his appalling sense of taste. And what’s this? Order time comes, and Phil’s philistine preference for burnt steak causes the waiter to ask the whole party to leave immediately. What an enchanting experience! Can’t wait to come back!

Are you even paying attention to what you’re writing?

Sure, well-done destroys the finer qualities of the meat, and ketchup smothers other flavors, but that’s the way Phil likes it. If his three comrades in sustenance feel that they have to “put up” with food that they’re not even eating, if they are somehow being “forced” to watch him eat ketchup (aaaaAAaaaaaAAAA!!!), then their entire existence is sunken in meaningless histrionic fakery. They are deliberately choosing to be offended by the subjective experiences of another human being. What utterly useless people. They aren’t even Phil’s friends. They probably just hang out with him because he’s got access to box seats for the Sunday game.

I don’t deny that the restaurant’s got the right to serve things how it wants. Ain’t no cook alive has to cater to petulant customers’ whims. If the restaurant wants to kick those culinary hobos out on their ass, it’s their choice, their right. I’d do it myself. That is, if I owned a nice restaurant and thought I could make more money from the snoot crowd that way. A good business model is a good business model, even if it seems counter-intuitive to me.

On preview, I notice that Shagnasty has a great, positive story. And I support that. What I dislike here is the conceited undertone to it, the seemingly automatic, summary assumption that people who don’t have a wonderful time at dinner are somehow closed off to new cultures, or unwilling to try new things, or unappreciative of the delicacy of different situations. Ketchup is a “slippery slope”, and bizarre choices for bodily energy “can’t help but be noted”.

For all I know, Shagnasty was completely correct in his evaluation of the “lots” of people who haven’t measured up to his standards over the years. But you wouldn’t know that from the attitude portrayed in this thread, where the subjective preferences of others, people who might’ve spent decades experimenting with different foods only to give up and decide that ketchup really is best for them, are treated with scorn and derision. He’s described the behaviors of himself and his compatriots as “civility”, with the natural implication that those who act differently from his high standards are steeped in coarseness and low vulgarity.

And that passive aggression does not stand, man.

I get that ketchup on hot dogs blots out everything else so that all that’s perceptible to the tongue is the sweetness. Just the way I like it, because sweetness is about all I really got goin’ for me in the taste department. But if y’all feel compelled to keep talking even after you’ve discussed the chemistry of ketchup, then qualify your statements. It does not do to shoot out wild implications that everyone who acts oddly when ingesting is an unexperimental, impolite, vulgar contrarian. Some of them surely do, but surely there are exceptions. Acknowledge those exceptions.

And frankly, claiming that one’s own behavior is the standard for civility is just lame.

98

Wrong! :mad:

No national brand of hot dog in the U.S. contains meat byproducts.

Under U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations, “meat” is defined as skeletal muscle. Anything else is a meat byproduct. Any hot dog that contains a meat byproduct must change its label name from “hot dogs” (or “frankfurters” or whatever) to “hot dogs with byproducts,” or “hot dogs with variety meats” next to the name. The ingredients list must also itemize the byproducts (e.g., heart, tongue).

From the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations:

99

Flouting?

100

What was the problem with angel food cake and some milk?