Musings on topics of small or large importance. Especially partial to subjects that include baby boomers, public figures, friends, Corporate America, the Denver Broncos, NASCAR, my previous home towns of New York City and Columbia (Maryland), stupidity (mine and others'), diets and health and who knows what else!

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Have My Chips Been Dipped Before?

A couple of days ago, I went to my favorite little neighborhood Mexican food restaurant for lunch. The chips and salsa are especially good there. The chips are crispy, strong enough for dipping, salty enough but not too, and actually tasty rather than cardboardy like some of them can be. The salsa is flavorful, relatively smooth (tomato chunks and onion slivers are the lazy version of salsa) and, thanks to those little devlish jalapeƱo pepper seeds, spicy-hot. I made the mistake of not waiting for the water before popping a dipped chip into my mouth and found myself coughing and sputtering like a gringo. A few minutes later, I heard someone at the table two behind me doing the same thing. Now that's salsa!

Normally I overindulge on the chips before the entree arrives, but this little place is so fast that I only got through a small handful of them before my queso chicken burrito landed in front of me.

So, since I had a nearly full bowl of chips and a nearly full container of salsa, and since (I believe) by law they can't serve chips and salsa that have been served and removed from a table to anyone else, after my meal I asked to take them with me.

"We don't usually do that," the manager (who was also my waiter that day) told me. I looked him like "You've gotta be kidding!" and he quickly said, "But if you want to...." I said I did and he got me a foam box for my chips and a mini-cup and top for my salsa. And I was happy.

But...I couldn't help but wonder why they "don't usually do that." It's not like I ordered a refill. If they serve them to customers in open bowls, surely they wouldn't bus the tables and dump the uneaten but pawed-over chips into the big bowl they scoop them from, or pour the uneaten but dipped-into (and maybe double-dipped-into) salsa into the vat they ladle it from. Would they? WOULD they???

I've seen many restaurants in the past pour remaining salad dressing from tables back into the big tub from which they fill the little individual plastic cups. Oooooh, gross!

Even though I don't have any hard evidence that my maybe formerly favorite Mexican food restaurant returns chips and/or salsa to the community bowl, I admit that I feel a little squeamish about returning there. Of course, that didn't stop me from eating the chips and salsa I doggie-bagged home. I figure there are a million little things like that going on every day in restaurants that we don't see. And don't want to. So I just look at it as keeping my immunity up!