Remember as a kid when your parents had to tell you not to eat the parsley that accompanied your dinner? I was always mystified by this idea of food as a decoration. Why would a restaurant put food on your plate if you weren’t supposed to eat it? What was the point?
This thought occurred to me again as I saved my martini from being whisked away by an overly efficient waitress at Fiction, a local restaurant/martini bar/hangout. True, the drink itself was finished, but the best part of the drink remained: two lonely cranberries huddled together for protection at the bottom of my glass, awaiting the inevitable. Meanwhile, my drink’s lemon wedge patiently perched on the edge of my glass, waiting for the chance to jump for the door and make tracks to Mexico…and freedom!
The waitress’s haste only served to underline what my parents had tried to teach me as a child: it’s not food, stupid, it’s garnish. But does anyone know what it takes to get a fresh lemon and two cranberries to the West Coast of Canada in the middle of spring? Well, I sure don’t, not even after looking on the Internet. Damn Google. But even without Internet confirmation, I’m certain it isn’t easy.
How much of that garnish is actually good food going to waste? Consider the forms of garnish that most people send back uneaten:
- Cranberries
- Lemon and orange wedges
- Lettuce
- Parsley
- Carrot slices
- French fries
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency food discards in 1995 generated 14 million tons of waste. A mere 5% of this amount of food would be enough to feed roughly 4 million people for a day!
With all of the starvation in the world, why do we waste this food? It’s simple: we’re a product of a society obsessed with form and presentation because we have nothing left to occupy our time and attention. Garnish is to food as Gucci is to loafers. And in the case of the wicker loafers they’re probably both made of the same stuff. So the next time you’re out for a meal and it’s better dressed than you, eat the garnish.