Wednesday 26 July 2017

All-You-Can-Eat, I hate you

I got a gastric sleeve back in December, which completely changed my life. For the most part, it's been great and I'm glad I had it done.

However, it does put to flight the concept of All You Can Eat. My current stomach capacity is about 200ml, which is just under a measuring cup.

In theory I eat all I can at every meal, which is about three or four bites of whatever, then a little something to drink. And I'm full.

This puts a cramp in my old habit of enjoying restaurants.

Some friends are planning on going to an all-you-can-eat Brazilian barbeque. They're hoping to get a group booking so they can "get the price down to $30/head".  Alas, I can't participate. No way am I paying $30 per bite, er I mean, per head.

If I'm going to pay that much for that little food, it had better be Wagyu beef drenched in truffle sauce.

Another downside to a teeny tiny stomach is I can't participate fully in degustation menus. These are the delightful ten course meals put on by the fanciest restaurants to allow you to sample all their glorious art, er, food. His Grace and I enjoyed going out to degustations a few times a year. While the individual serves are teeny-tiny, believe me, after ten or more courses, at the end your normal stomach can be quite full.

Can't do that any more, at least, not the way I used to.

I might be able to participate in a degustation, but only if the restaurant is happy to accommodate my dietary restrictions. (The best restaurants will cater to dietary restrictions, such as food allergies, religious restrictions, etc.)  I have no idea if they would allow for my particular restrictions.

Can His Grace and I go to a fine restaurant and order one degustation to be shared between two people? I do have a card from my surgeon asking for restaurants to consider letting me order smaller portions. We haven't been game to ask for this consideration. It would be nice if they could. The degustations we indulge in are often $150 per person.

With a degustation, I would literally have one bite of His Grace's plate, and he'd finish the rest. We used to go to a brilliant restaurant that closed a few months ago. They were more than accommodating for issues. I wonder if they would have been accommodating for something like this. Maybe if we had a party of four or more, where they would have been making enough money per head to allow one "freeloader" chair space.

It's now that time of year when we'd go out and indulge.

His Grace and I have some thinking to do as regarding whether we may be able to enjoy the culinary arts equally in the future.

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