We’re doing a mid-high end wedding at the Walden in Chicago in May 2024. Funny if you’re involved. PM as appropriate.
Dopefest at the wedding! Food & drink compliments of the newlyweds.
You know what would be really cool; if Vince Vaughn was secretly a Doper & he came too!
I copied it verbatim. It’s kind of, Sigh, we’ll do something for you with the ‘is available’ at the end of it.
Believe me I’d love a dopefest vs. a tiresome family event.
Mostly serious Q: how big a Chicago dopefest could we rig up on ~4-6 weeks notice? I’d be happy to catalyze the event even if I couldn’t make the arrangements. Cost no object; do it up first class.
I could likely be there, though I may not be the best choice for arrangements.
(Likely worth its own thread!)
Dopefest everyone shows up at a bar or Dopefest where a room and food/drinks are arranged?
Largely depends on numbers I’d think.
Either. The bare minimum is a date & time & a location. We can ad lib the rest. They can make room if we wave a big enough stick.
My tastes run high end gastro eat and drink, not Bud at TGIFridays.
But I can do anything w a sufficiently congenial crowd.
My in-laws are a lot like that. They’re neither adventurous nor do they actually eat anything that’s actually interesting. They’re some combination of people who are just not interested in food, and people who are descended from meat & potatoes eating Iowa farmers. If it’s “weird” in any way, they’ll probably refuse it, even if they’ve never tried it before.
It’s a weird sort of risk aversion- the mere suspicion that they might not like something is enough for them to not even be willing to try it. Which to me is weird AF, because there’s just as much chance I might like something I’ve had before as their is that I might not. It’s sort of a potential glass-half-empty vs. glass-half-full situation.
And it’s not like I haven’t ordered things I haven’t liked before. I once ordered Bun Bo Hue, and didn’t like it. The broth wasn’t to my liking, and all the offal-ish stuff that came with it were not my speed. But I did try it, I didn’t like the version I had, and I got a hamburger on the way home. No harm, no foul, I learned something, and I didn’t go hungry.
On long haul international airline flights usually one of the standard meal options is vegetarian, usually some sort of pasta. And I will often pick that option, because for reasons similar to what you listed it’s usually the safest option.
Come to think of it the best economy class meal I’ve ever had on a flight was a vegetarian Indian meal on a Lufthansa flight to Bangalore.
That sounds exactly like my dad. He grew up in the Midwest eating traditional meat and potatoes, and he doesn’t want to try anything different from that. There is one Chinese-American dish he knows he likes, broccoli beef. Whenever we go to a Chinese restaurant he orders that. Maybe he would like a different dish it he were to try it, but he doesn’t want to stray from what he knows he likes. “Not interested in food” is probably a factor, too – he’s never heard of dishes I wouldn’t consider that exotic, like chicken Kiev, but he’s never heard of it and doesn’t want to try it. We went to the Russian Tea Room over the holidays because I wanted to go there; I think he was even slightly suspicious of their burger, because the menu said it was made of Wagyu beef and he didn’t know what “Wagyu” meant, but he was reassured when I explained it was just beef from a Japanese cow that was raised in a special way.
I think maybe for him it comes from having grown up in a poor family, where it was probably “you eat what you’re given, or you go hungry.” So if he orders something and he ends up not liking it, he would feel obligated to choke it down anyway so it doesn’t go to waste. So it’s better to not risk it. And getting a burger on the way home, he would probably consider that doubly wasteful, to buy a meal, not eat it, and then spend more money for a different meal.
In a putatively elegant restaurant a couple of years ago, the waitress ran through the specials. I asked her to repeat what vegetable one of the dishes came with.
“Hair ee coat vertz”, she said. Took me a moment.
I decided this was not the time to get pedantic.
When it was our table’s turn to be served, they came over; the lead server asked who John Doe & Bob Smith were - okay, those two get the chicken & then everyone else got a plate of surf & turf placed in front of them. The turf was filet & varied from medium-well to medium to rare among people at our table. No, we didn’t get a choice, & no, you didn’t know which one you got until you cut into it. It was good if you got what you liked but very uneven cooking from the kitchen.
Assuming the folks around the table were friends or at least reasonable people, I could sure see everyone cutting into their filets then trading plates around until at least most folks got closer to their preferred doneness.
That’s no fix if 90% of you wanted rare and the table got 90% well-done. But odds are neither preferences nor outcomes were that extreme.
Was it rubber chicken, though?
Mass-catered events are not usually known for culinary excellence…
The travel agent I used back in the day in Budapest always told me to opt for the Hindu meal if it was available on the flight, and she would put a special note or whatever it is that travel agents do/used to do, to make sure I would get it. Or the vegetarian if that option was not available. It really was consistently better than the usual meals, though I personally don’t mind regular airplane food. It’s never been anywhere near as bad as people make it out to be.
That was my secret for surviving decades of Academic Decathlon awards banquets - vegetarian or kosher. Eventually my teams started believing me and ordering the same way. Our tables would have real food. The others…not so much.
No one really thought of it until everyone cut into & had a bite of their own.
You wouldn’t want to trade plates & get someone else’s cooties, would ya?
Side note: it was a COVID superspreader event. 
Chicken was surprisingly good.
As I’ve said for decades now:
Ever since I came up positive for AIDS I just don’t worry about sharing food with anyone.
The funniest moment was when I used that line back around 1992 on a flight attendant at work and her eyes got real big and she said “You have AIDS???!?!???”
No Honey, I have an irrevernant sense of humor and a brain. Sheesh!!
Sometime fairly early in the pandemic I got a photo, which of course I had to post online myself. It was test results showing that I did not have Covid, with a big thumbs up emoticon.
Covid was about the 7th item on the list that was ‘tested’ for, & of course, was the most important thing at that time.
All of the other ‘tests’ came back with the positive column checked off - chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, hepatitis, AIDs, etc. 
Geesh, I know I’m not the first one to say those are quite insulting attitudes, but it seems to be the minority opinion. Six choices can be highly curated to ensure it serves nearly all tastes, but if it’s changing on a daily basis that’s a pretty tall order.
I wouldn’t consider myself a picky eater, but I think most of you would. I am picky about ingredients, not dishes or types of food. Give me Indian curry, pho, gyros, kung pao, ramen, kimchi, bibimbap, sushi, mussels, pad thai, and all the typical American, Mexican, and Italian favorites. But don’t give me the ones with onions, pickles, celery, raw tomatoes, or mushrooms.
I could totally see going to a limited-menu restaurant where half of the dishes include some of those ingredients. Fancy foods do seem to gravitate towards onion-based pan sauces for example. Then you’re left with a potentially lackluster chicken dish and the vegetarian baked squash that may not be bad but is just unappealing. I don’t find that to be picky or childish.
I can see this going in totally opposite directions depending on the restaurant. A limited menu at a high-end restaurant suggests that they’re doing what they know they can do to to their absolute highest and best effort. They may not be set up to provide a bespoke dish by request considering the fresh ingredients they procured that morning. On the other hand, a fancy restaurant where you’re paying out the nose seems like a place where you should be able to order something that’s not on the menu, within reason.
Right, I think it depends on the restaurant. Do they pride themselves on their specialties, or on their versatility?
Actually I would respect either one and almost certainly get a good meal in any case.
But of course I’m not a very picky or allergic eater…