| Couple of years ago a bunch of us went to Tahoe snowboarding. We spent two weeks there, and all we could find to eat was fried stuff. Burgers, pizza, Tex-Mex, etc. Nothing fresh, no vegetables or salad, nothing that wasn't covered in lard or cheese. By the end of week one we were all desparate for something green that wasn't the token lettuce in a cheeseburger!
We knew things weren't going to be good at the start of the first week when we found ourselves in a White Spot diner. There were about 12 of us, including four vegetarians. They tried to order veggie-burgers like we have in the UK, i.e. a nice paty of mixed beans and vegetables in place of the beef burger. No such luck. "Never heard of it. I suppose we could do you a cheeseburger but not put any meat in it". Then we ask the sweet but clueless waitress if they have any vegetables we can have with our burgers. Confused look; "we have fries?". No, fresh vegetables, ones that still have some nutrition left and have been boiled, steamed or grilled, but NOT fried!. She disappears to the kitchen for a couple of minutes, comes back looking like she's just passed an exam, all smiles; "today, our vegetable is carrot!". We all order carrots, what turns up is the small semi-pickled baby carrots out of a tin, but at least they look like proper vegetables. We have just cleaned the diner completely out of veg.
Towards the end of the second week, only two more nights left, four of us are on our own when the taxi driver asks where we want to go, we give up and just say 'somewhere that doesn't sell fried food'. He looks at us like we've just arrived from Mars (at that moment we all realise we've just convinced him finally that the war of independance was well worth it). He says " there's a new place opened round the lake a ways. It's weird. I've heard they sell Japanese food there". Sold. We ask him to take us there and he immediately gets stuck in a snow drift. We're completely stuck. All the driver does is get out, get back ,in, jam his foot to the floor and wheelspin for half a minute, shake his head, sit there for a short while, then do it all again. All through this, there's an old 'man of the mountains' type watching us. Eventually, he comes over to the taxi and knocks ont he driver's window. When the driver lowers his window, the old mountain bloke just says "Dude, that's not going to help" and walks off chuckling to himself.
Eventually we get into another taxi, first driver tells new driver where he was taking us, and we eventually get to the new, weird, foreign place. We are the only people there! We order a huge plate of tuna sashimi and a round of Japanese beer whilst we ponder a menu full of things like 'steamed vegetable salad with sesame'. Heaven!
The next night (our last night in Tahoe), after a whole day of torturing our friends with stories of non-fried food and fresh veg, we call the place to book us all in for a last night meal. They're shut that night.
On the way back we spent a couple of days in San Francisco. Fresh crab cooked in front of us in a vat of boiling water. Fantastic (but definitely not for the vegetarians!).
Rich. |