Choosing Courses

The best thing about eating at a restaurant is that you get courses, should you so choose.

Someone comes and takes your plate away after you finish your salad.  And they come back in a moment and give you something else.

I like that. If I won the lotto, aside from getting a larger house to accomodate all my stuff, I'd spend all my money on a good house-servant or two. Someone who knew how to put it down and take it away. Even if I did the cooking myself.

However, the restaurant poses another crucial choice.  We can choose three courses (or more of course) and have Appetizer, Main Course, and Dessert.  But our old tummies can't accomodate that much food any more and we have to choose two.  That leaves one with a main course with either an appetizer to precede, or a dessert to follow. 

I guess it'd be the mood one's in, mainly, that decides the procedure. Usually nowadays I skip the dessert (as they are usually manufactured in a warehouse far away and kept in the refrigerator till needed, sometimes much later indeed.) 

But there are niceties to be observed with choosing my usual, the Appetizer and the Main Course.  They should be as far different as possible in manner of preparation.  I had the clam and mussels in wine broth, and then the veal scallopini with vegetables.  Who knew that both dishes would include tomatoes diced finely, in a mixture of tomato-onion-garlic-herbs?  I should have asked. I should have thought. But I didn't.

A better choice would have been the salmon and spinach presentation, perhaps. Probably no tomatoes there. But my sensibilities have been warned off sickly US cultivated salmon, and there was no adventence to the contrary.  The chicken was another herb/chicken dish.  The steak? It had a tomato sauce...

It's a distinction like that one I was talking about before: No Garlic in the Enchiladas. Our cuisine should be fairly rigid, so that one would know pretty exactly what one was getting upon ordering a dish.  There should not be a more than 70% inclusion of tomatoes in the main courses for sure, as all the rest of the things on the menu (pizzas, pasti, and all those  appetizers) seemed to have tomatoes too...Come to think of it, that is the major flaw I found in the restaurant, Trattoria Italianissimo (other than the name), in downtown Chula Vista.  Otherwise it is a pleasant place with real waiters (with ties on) and white tablecloths and nice cutlery and real people cooking in the kitchen.  I got a glass of yummy Pinot Grigio for eight dollars to go with my clams and mussels.  Their menu was more ambitious when they opened up...but times are hard, restaurant-goers expectant of chain-store practices, tastes ignorant in the long run...so they have become more accessible. I guess that means tomatoes and lots of them. Maybe I should suggest risi-e-bisi (spelling looks wrong) or some of the other simple but beguiling dishes in the Italian cucina. YAZZYBEL