Don’t waste food, part 2

So I’m on vacation in Paris this week, and I was having duck confit last night at a bookstore/wine bar when I struck up a conversation with the couple sitting next to me. They were fascinating people…Juliet is a writer from England, and Alfred is a photographer from France with family in Sicily (and spoke basically perfect English). They split their time between London and Paris, and also spend summers in the south of France (must be nice, huh?). It was Juliet’s birthday and they were having drinks there prior to her traditional birthday dinner at this restaurant down the street.

It was taking me a bit longer to finish my food since I was enjoying the conversation, and at one point the waitress started to take away my food since she thought I didn’t want to finish it.

I stopped her and said, “Oh I’m not done.” Another waitress at the bar saw and acknowledged (in a heavy French accent), “Ah, good…yeah, some people don’t finish their food, like the salad, but I think it’s good to finish your food.”

I looked her straight in the eyes and said, “Yeah, I always finish my food.”

She nodded, “Very nice. I think it’s a matter of respect.”

I replied, “Yes, I totally agree.”

So I licked my plate clean, and then they took it away.

The irony is that I actually didn’t finish my lunch that day. Well, I almost did…I had a chicken teriyaki bowl (best chicken teriyaki of my life, by the way), and left some rice unfinished since I was full and deemed that to be acceptable.

I’m pretty sure my late grandparents would not have agreed with that assessment, as they taught me that my “finished” rice bowl would resemble my future wife’s face (presumably the unfinished rice grains representing undesirable blemishes or scars).

Eventually this filtered down to: if you can’t finish, at least eat the meat, which I think is now the official mantra of Asians growing up everywhere.

I say Asians because I remember this one conversation with a non-Asian friend who laughed when he heard that, and said, “Yeah, when I grew up my parents just said it’s okay if you can’t finish.”

Which was such a novel idea to me at the time that I still remember it now, 10+ years later…and all it took was a conversation in a Parisian restaurant to confirm that no, it’s not just an Asian thing to not waste your food.

Unless it’s rice, in which case….well, I’ll let you decide.