Sauce or gravy
Is it sauce or is it gravy? I guess either or works, but sauce was the word for me. When I first learned English, gravy was that brown stuff you put on your mashed potatoes. One of my earliest memories of mashed potatoes was from Old Country Buffet. I was a chubby little kid in the middle of an AARP convention, but they have to be credited for seeding the idea of the "All you can eat" buffet into my fat little head. Sure, their gravy ain't all that but it's brown and it goes on mashed potatoes. And yea everyone around me at the time looked like NFL linemen with white and receding hair. But it was all good. Back to the topic of sauce vs gravy... it's all semantics anyway, so not like it matters to me. Just saying, when you mention gravy, I think mashed potatoes. I'm curious though, what do you think of when you hear the word sauce? When you hear the word gravy?
In the last post about NY Wine and Food festival, Anne asked about the wine glass bib. So I busted out the pictures for y'all. Hope it makes more sense now. Have any of you seen anything like that before? They pretty much blew my mind when they said to put this around your neck. They should invent one of those things that'll hold a cupcake or a hot stack of pancakes. Mmmm... pancakes...
Anyway so I was eating dinner at Blue Hill the other day and basically none of the pictures turned out except one. It was the appetizer of braised eggplant with an egg yolk on top and some random green stuff. The thing about eating three star meals is that you expect a leprechaun to sing for you and lucky charms to fall out of the sky or something. At least I do... sure they got table clothes and they got servers that'll always refill your water and pull out your table when you want to get up... but I left Blue Hill wanting a Big Mac. And specifically a Big Mac too, just for humor because Dan Barber always champions local and farm goods. I left hungry and wondering if I'll ever be pleased at a fine dining restaurant if it doesn't fill me up. Is getting full the point?
Anyway it's about time for a Danny story because it's been a while. So at the beginning of my meal I get up and go to the restroom. There's two bathrooms at Blue Hill and I'm there waiting and the woman who sat at the next table was there waiting too. Both bathrooms open up at the same time. She heads into one and I take the other. It's really dark in there so I figit with the lock and pull lightly on the door to check, and then go about my business. As I'm standing there, all of a sudden I hear the door knob and the door opened. It was some middle aged white dude and I could utter was, "Uh... almost done." So I finish, walk out, and no one is there waiting for the bathroom. Back at my table, the woman at the next table was not back, which means the dude who opened the door didn't go into the other bathroom, but instead went back to his seat. Talk about awkward. So basically the middle aged white dude who saw me in the bathroom also saw me walk back to my seat. Weird. And trying to spot a middle aged white dude in Blue Hill is like looking for the fatty in Old Country Buffet.
Moral of the story is, always always always check the lock on the door even if it is dark and you really have to go. Just do it so you won't have a stranger walk in on you. At least I didn't have to walk back into the dining room and make awkward eye contact with the culprit. Maybe dim lighting is good after all, but I still want a Big Mac.
In my Italian (Sicilian really) family, gravy is tomato sauce and brown gravy is meat gravy. Still confuses those non-Italians (meaning those who married in to the family) to no end.
Janice
October 14, 2008 9:29 am
Psst, Janice, thanks for that, I just ignore my boyfriend when he's talking about gravy and all I see is tomato sauce... haha.
Ummm, coincidentally, last night at a I-don't-know-how-many-stars (but upscale) restaurant, a woman burst in on me in the stall. I was just like, there's slats on the door, you can kind of tell someone's in there, why the hell are you pushing on the door like that you b*tch! =X
Yvo
October 14, 2008 10:25 am
or maybe he did go into the other bathroom, wink, wink.
Blondie
October 14, 2008 8:59 pm
Maybe he went in the sink -=X
wonders
October 15, 2008 10:40 am
http://www.heroes4heroes.org/
how about that. a comic book charity that actually wants comic books.
Jonathan
October 15, 2008 7:15 pm
Janice,
Hmmm... see I got confused when I first heard that because in the grocery store, that stuff in a jar says sauce. :P
Yvo,
hahahaha, oh man. I didn't call out the dude like that but it's really surprising eh? People these days...
Blondie,
Oooooh maybe he did!!
wonders,
hahahaha, oh well that would be a new one... going in the sink at a three-star restaurant :P
Jonathan,
Gotta say that looks like a cool group
Danny
October 17, 2008 9:26 am