Unless you’re also a vegetarian, people probably aren’t likely to recommend vegetarian restaurants to you. We definitely get excited about restaurants with good vegetarian options and share amongst one another.
Poultry – hoping it’s chicken. I’m just that boring.
Every time I’ve had any kinda of airplane train or any kind of catered meal, the vegetarian meal has consistently sucked the least. So I voted vegetarian. I’d I knew someone who could actually cook was making it, I’d probably pick beef.
I went with Beef.
I was leaning toward seafood, and then thought of the possibility that it would be something like octopus, which I couldn’t eat. Same with the veggie option - if its got cauliflower or cabbage in it, I won’t eat it. Don’t eat chicken and pork is ok, but prefer beef.
I would be hoping that the beef option would be a nice prime rib roast or a steak, but there is the possibility it could be something like tripe (is that considered ‘beef’?) in which case, I would be going hungry.
You’re being too specific. You certainly hear folks raving about hamburgers, steaks, pulled pork, etc.; specific cooking methods for beef and pork have devoted followings. And for me, seafood is the least safe option, because it’s so often terribly overcooked and/or drowned in butter as a substitute for artful cooking.
To be honest, I’ve never experienced that phenomenon. But I live in Chicago, which, while it has its fair share of seafood, is not what I would call a “seafood town.” Even when I’m stopped by tourists or asked by visitors for recommendations, I can’t remember a single time anyone’s asked me specifically about seafood.
I picked pork, mostly because we never have it at the place I live right now (with my parents; my mother can’t eat it anymore because it makes her ill) and I don’t really know any recipes for it myself the way I do with the other options, so I won’t eat it that much when I start living with my fiance next month.
On the other hand, as mentioned upthread, if lamb was a choice I’d be all over that. And I know how to cook lamb. It’s just my favorite.
Seafood is very vague, shrimp, lobster, clams, oysters, cod, salmon?
Ill pretty much always do lobster if offered, otherwise beef.
Without knowing the details I’d probably lean towards beef. If I’m just told that beef will be serve I imagine it might be a roast, a steak, or maybe even hamburger.
Hamburger comes in many qualities but even low quality hamburger is edible. Roast is hard to fuckup. Steaks are easy to fuckup but even tough chewy steaks are at least edible.
I love pork and seafood but both are very easy to not only fuck up, but fuck up in a way that might make you physically ill. I don’t trust a random person’s prep skills for either item. A restaurant is a different matter of course, as they have established and known reputations.
Poultry is generally not something I would pick over beef in a generic line up of food, just because it tends towards the less exciting.
Poultry. I can eat most poultry dishes even if they’re boring or really badly prepared. I only like certain kinds of fish, so seafood is too risky. I don’t eat pork, so that’s out. Vegetarian, in a high proportion of my experiences, tends to be vegetarian lasagna, which I hate (hate regular lasagna, too). Beef is OK, but I prefer chicken.
Obviously if more information is provided, the choices open up a little bit. For my cousin’s wedding, they had four entree options enclosed in the invitation, all of which were described in detail. I gave the halibut serious thought.
Forks over knives.
I went with poultry. I would prefer a good seafood dish; a good beef dish would be my second choice. But in my experience, in a banquet setting, you get mediocre seafood or beef dishes at best, and the vegetarian dish is usually just an unimaginative concoction thrown in to fill the needs of the few vegetarians in the crowd. Poultry is the safe choice – and yes, it’s going to be chicken.
When I ate meat, I’d probably have gone with chicken, which can be anything from fried chicken to entrees with interesting flavor/ingredient combinations, none of which is gross or boring. Never liked pork too much, beef is almost always the boring steak/potatoes/green vegetable combo, and seafood could either be really awesome that I really loved (properly prepared shrimp, lobster, crab, a good fish) or something I found completely inedible (squid, octopus, escargot, clams, oysters, shrimp with the mud vein still in, poor quality fish). So, chicken first choice, vegetarian or beef second choice, seafood third (a huge gamble, either it will be awesome or horrible), pork dead last.
Unfortunately, I’m a vegetarian now, and I have to say that most banquet halls and/or caterers give vegetarians short shrift. At my last awards ceremony, the main entree was an interesting thing with some kind of meat, asparagus and a tangy sauce, kosher/halal got chicken breasts with cranberries and some crazy-looking toppings, and vegetarians got sliced zucchini and squash on hamburger buns. The holiday dinner I just had with my employer provided mashed potatoes (no gravy) as the entree and biscuits as the side to the vegetarians (and meat-free folks… we have a number of old-school Catholics who stay meat-free on Fridays). That’s it. Everything else, including the four vegetable sides, had meat in it.
If I could have them all, I would eat them all. But give me a well-marbled ribeye steak the size of a paperback book (and about two weeks of penance at the gym for all that fat), and I’m golden.
Pork because I can’t think of a pork cut or a pork dish I wouldn’t enjoy but there are tons on poultry, seafood and beef cuts/dishes I’d rather not have.
But my real favorite choice would be lamb.
I voted beef, because I’m assuming its a steak of some sort, roasted at most until it is still slightly juicy, if not medium rare like I like it. Like other said, I hoping they can’t get it wrong. If they ended up serving beef tips in 4 hr grey meat sauce, I’d be disappointed.
But if they’d go out of their way to ruin meat like that, what are you likely to get with the other options: Overcooked pork tenderloin? 3 hr Roasted chicken breast? Fillet-o-fish? Cauliflower and Broccoli Terrine in Agar Aspic?
The more that I think about it, i should have went with pork, not beef. The beef could be undercooked*, but there’s no way the pork will be. And both terms generally do not include any parts of the animal that I don’t like.
As for the rest, there are seafood and poultry (though not chicken) that I will not eat, so I daren’t choose those. And while I love nearly all vegetables, I always feel like there’s something missing without some meat, unless it’s something like bean soup.
*Yes, I’m one of those barbarians who does not eat meat cooked below medium. I’m just not a fan of beef juice unless it’s the brown stuff you get au jus.
Pork. So many parts of the pig, and they all taste different.
I’d go beef if it were a nice ribeye or strip steak, or, my go-to, a chuck roast cooked blue and sliced thin, or duck (poultry) if it were cooked the way I like, but, you might end up with some greasy duck wings with flabby skin.
Shrimp is a close second, especially that Japanese shrimp heads deep fried, with all those whiskers – I love that, can’t remember the name.
Pork, can’t go wrong. Granted, I eat vegetarian most weeks from financial concerns, and I probably wouldn’t even want to eat meat every day, but pork (sausage? bacon? loin? trotters? chops? any of it’s good)? Get out, man! Very versatile.
Besides, soul is a hamhock in your cornflakes.
I said pork, because that’s the only way the entree could turn out to be bacon.
I picked seafood, as I like just about all kinds I’ve tried, but would have to hope it was at least cooked. I’ve never dared to “eat it raw” at a sushi bar, and probably never will.
Beef would be what I’d check if the only option were to “eliminate one”. I can’t stomach ground beef, and wouldn’t regret turning down even a great steak as long as the entree I ended up with was palatable enough.
Side note: Many restaurants have all kinds of “red meat” and poultry choices, then one “fish” option. Ever see a menu listing trout, salmon, tilapia, shrimp, and then a token “mammal” dish?