Being from Spain is a pretty kick-ass credential for expertise in French cuisine. Totes.
About gluten and fast food: I used to have a customer who had sprue, and she liked McDonald’s and could have it as long as she brought her own bread. (this was about 15 years ago). She explained that she was “allergic” to regular bread, and had never had a problem.
I kind of sympathize with picky eaters. There are some things that I just won’t eat, and it’s not because of strange ideas I heard about somewhere. My body rejects them. I can’t even go into an Indian restaurant without becoming violently nauseated from the smell of the spices. I don’t know why. I love Thai curries, but Indian curries, I’m not eating them even if you point a gun at my head. I’m also a cilantro taster, which means you may be oh so proud of your salsa, but it tastes like soap to me. I’ll choke down one bite, mutter something vaguely polite, and go look for something else to eat. I also do not eat some kinds of seafood (clams, mussels) because I’ll actually vomit the second it hits my stomach (which goes over so well at social events); I’m not allergic, and I actually enjoy eating snails so I don’t know what is up with that. I figure most picky eaters suffer from similar “my body says NO” problems. But everyone should make an effort to be polite. If you have to go home hungry, at least you had a fun social experience.
As a picky eater, I find people who want to make an issue about what other people are eating the most annoying thing. Everyone has something they won’t eat. Everyone. It doesn’t matter how many times I try eggplant, I’m going to find it revoltingly mushy and bitter. Mushrooms will always taste like dirt. Cherries and peaches trigger my gag reflex. It is the way it is, and I don’t make an issue out of it. No thank you is definitely part of my vocabulary. Most of the time the other person is fine.
It’s the people who can’t get over the fact that I don’t like their favorite food that drive me nuts. Yes, I know you find peaches lovely. Yes, those look especially juicy. Yes, I’m sure they are sweet this year. No I won’t try that particular peach because it tastes like a peach. No I’m not going to give you a catalog of all the food I won’t eat because it’s frankly none of your business. No I don’t hate Aunt June because I won’t try her peach cobbler.
And just because there are foods I won’t eat, it doesn’t mean I have an “immature palate” or I was “raised wrong.” I find I like a great variety of foods from many different nationalities.
As for the spicy food thing, a little more sympathy is nice. I wasn’t raised with spicy food. I spent ten years getting to the point where I could stand some tingling on my lips. yes, it hurts. Some people are more sensitive to the spice than others.
I have a friend who is not a picky eater at all, but the same thing happens to her if she eats anything with coconut in it. Even a small amount of oil in a topical product will make her sick if she licks it off her fingers. She and her spouses (they’re poly) frequent a local donut shop, and they know that they need to change gloves before getting her donuts, and to package her husband’s separately, because he likes the ones with coconut and can eat them.
As for eggplant, I have never acquired the taste for it either, nor have I ever liked ketchup or coffee and can taste those in microscopic amounts. None of these things make me sick in any way; I just don’t like them.
Eh, I was a very picky eater when I was young. I wasn’t demanding or critical, though. I just wouldn’t eat some stuff. Well, there was this one time…
I don’t like peas piled on a plate. I don’t mind them in casseroles or in soup or stews, but not on a plate in a pile. Now, my mom knew this. She knew I hadn’t eaten them for 17 years. But one time (at home) she served them to me and mentioned starving children. So, I left the table, dug an envelope out of my desk, wrote “To The Staving Children In Europe” on it, returned to the table, spooned the offending peas into the envelope, sealed it, slapped it on the table and told my mom “Here, mail it to 'em!” There was an anxious silence until she broke out in laughter. Whew!
Getting drafted took care of a lot of that pickiness. Sure, I’d always try to avoid Ham and motherfuckers or trade them away for Beef with Gravy Chunks. Actually, there was a guy in my squad who could make H*MFs actually taste good and was good to trade with. He’d never reveal his secret, but worcheshire sauce, celery salt, and tabasco were some of the ingredients. Once I tried to convince him to spill, but his reasoning was sound: “If I keep it a secret, you’re less likely to put me on point”.
But, as it turns out, I do have a sensitivity to onions. Dried is okay as is onion powder, but raw, sauteed, fried, boiled, etc. is just bad for me. So sometimes I’ll ask if there are any onions in something. And some good friends who know will either make some sans onions or have the onions on the side to be added by the diner, and I’m grateful toward them. And at restaurants I’ll order whatever without onions. I may have to wait a little longer, but it’s better that way.
Definitely this. My wife will eat most anything, and I’m fairly picky, but there are a number of things I like that she won’t touch.
I am a low maintenance picky eater. I can eat something at any restaurant, and will at least try a bit of something that a host makes. I don’t sigh or complain.
On the other hand, don’t be insulted if I don’t eat every bit of what you made and rave about it. It’s not a judgement about you. And yes, I have had it “fresh”, and prepared right. Quit trying to push it on me.
Knock it off, Scumpup. No need for that level of personal snark in this forum.
No, but having lived in France for three years, of which the last five months ended in January of this same year, kind of helps. Hops over the border don’t count: those involve “fancy cooking” pretty much by definition (my house is an hour from the border following the shortest road, which is best left for pilgrims and suicidal drivers, or one hour and a half on the good road). But years of eating with factory workers, do count.
I have a friend who is certified celiac. If she eats anything with any gluten at all it makes her very ill and can even cause hallucinations. So I totally understand that dietary restriction.
But what I don’t get is that she voluntarily chooses to be vegetarian, does not drink alcohol, and only eats certified and fair trade products.
She is really cool and makes an effort not to let her dietary restrictions affect us, but damn, I don’t understand why she would choose to add additional restrictions on top of what nature burdened her with…
I see so many people who attend conventions/banquets and who don’t realize that convention/banquet facility is not a restaurant. Here’s the key, relevant difference: A restaurant has a full menu and stocks all of the ingredients necessary to prepare anything on that menu, at any time. A convention/banquet facility has a full menu, but the specific items are selected by the organizer, well in advance, and the facility orders the necessary ingredients, and only those ingredients, when it comes time for the actual event. A convention/banquet facility needs to know ahead of time about special dietary requirements, so that it can order the appropriate items.
Latest dietary “fun”: Lady didn’t inform us ahead of time that she can’t eat gluten, instead waiting until the meal was being served. All we had on hand was the gluten-free pasta dish we had prepared for those who did tell us in advance. We had enough left to serve it to this lady.
Her: “Pasta? I don’t want this. I had pasta for lunch.”
Well, if you cook for a living…
I tend to lean more toward “more sensitive” than to what people were raised on, to a certain extent. When I was a child, my mother was an incredibly bland cook. Simple black pepper was “too hot” for her. If a dish has the slightest hint of plain old green bell pepper, that’s all she can taste, and makes the food unpalatable for her. I grew up hating beef stew, because my mom’s stew was all I knew: beef, potatoes, carrots, and celery in a watery beef broth and no additional seasoning. And we couldn’t afford to eat out very often. As a pre-teen, I discovered Mexican food and pizza, and was blown away by how awesome spicy food is.
I’m back at my convention job after leaving for two years. I left because of a new Executive Chef whose idea of “seasoning” was only a notch above my mom’s. He kept saying, “I’m a white guy. I don’t like ‘spicy’.” Yeah, dude, that’s fine, but we’re catering a fucking quinceañera!"
OTOH, I’m in the “I wasn’t raised with it” group when it comes to shellfish. My parents both love shellfish but, as a teenager, my dad developed a potentially-fatal allergy to all shellfish (except oysters, for some reason). So we literally never even had the stuff in the house. I’m almost 50 now, and I can’t eat the stuff. It just tastes (and smells) vile to me. But that doesn’t stop me from doing a good job of preparing it for others. I’ve been told repeatedly that I make amazing clam chowder (most recently by a retired lady who moved here (Washington state) from Boston).
So the jerk has left/been fired? Congrats on what I recall will be a move up to a better or at least more predictable gig.
Yup. The new Executive Chef, who is awesome, also happened to previously work for the same terrible retirement company I worked for, though at a different location, so already knew of me/we’d previously met. He’s been great to work for 
As soon as I lost the job at the retirement home, he hired me back to the convention center (thank goodness I left on good terms — had I not, the upper management could have vetoed me no matter how much the chef wanted me), so I was only out of work for a week or so. I would have just marked 10 years with the CC, had I not left to take the retirement home job, but I simply couldn’t work under the previous chef. On buffets with prime rib “carved by the chef”, I was the guy who got to stand there carving, and I hated the idea of guests looking at me and assuming I was responsible for the crap food.