Monday, May 7, 2007

Unnatural ichor

I bought myself a caesar salad for lunch today, from one of those places that has it in a big tub, and they scoop you out a serve, being very careful of course not to give you too much of the good stuff they arrange artfully on the top to make it look like there is lots of it.

Because of this artistry, it appeared that the dressing was just on the top and not on the lettuce where it needed to be. So I made a simple request - Could I have a little more dressing please? Now, I was ready to be told that it would cost extra, and I was ok with paying for extra mats. But instead he told me, in a very grumpy way, that it already had dressing on it. He wasn't even a grumpy, old guy. He was relatively young and good looking and should have been happier with life, even if he was working in a cafe which (I was soon to discover) sells dodgey salad.

Now, one of the guys had to go 'out the back' where they keep the dressing to put it on - hence the apparant inconvenience - and on eating said salad I realised it must be because they keep it in a huge vat. It was quite clearly insipid institutional style dressing usually served in university food halls and hospital cafeterias. Not the creamy goodness that you're supposed to get from a place serving real food.

I have never worked out for sure how they make this vile stuff but I am beginning to suspect it is whole egg mayonaise. Either that, or it's secreted from the glands of huge pulsating insect queens much like slurm, but without any of the otherwise appealing qualities.

3 comments:

Nick Jensen said...

mhhhh... royal slurm...

rswb said...

What's wrong with whole egg mayonnaise? Not that I like mayonnaise or would want it as a dressing, but it's better than fake mayonnaise, surely?

Kim/moolric said...

I meant whole egg versus mayonnaise made with just the yolk, which is going to be creamier but presumably a little wasteful unless you're making pavlovas at the same time.