Tartare

It was during a college trip to Milan, Italy. We had a filling Italian buffet breakfast served in our hotel. But the site visit in the morning was super intense and hectic and so by lunchtime, we all were starving. We walked a long way and entered a restaurant. Everyone ordered their own food. Since childhood, I am a kind who never had any fuss around food, I eat everything, and I was proud of this fact until this day. Overconfident that I can eat any food when the waiter came to take my order, I ordered randomly from the menu, Tartare. I found the rate reasonable and saw it under the non-veg/main course section and ordered it. (BTW I ordered steak tartare) When it came, I looked at it for some time; from every angle. Realized first that the yolk is raw. I thought I might not eat the yolk since it looks raw, so I started with a bite of the meat from the side. Holy shit, it's raw! I never knew about tartare. (FYI, tartare is a meat served raw, typically seasoned and shaped into small cakes.) I asked my friends around and everybody knew what tartare was! They just smiled and said, ‘you should have clarified before ordering’. It wasn’t a great deal for anybody except me. I didn’t want to create a scene, but I was so hungry. I looked at it for some time and tried to eat another bite. No, I can't eat raw meat. What do I do now? After some time, I called the waiter and told him that I don’t eat raw meat. He said, ‘you should have clarified earlier.’ Hmmm. I asked him if he could recook it. He said it was the dish I ordered. He showed me the menu pointing at the dish, in his broken Italian-English. Next, he said if I didn’t want to eat it, he asked me to order something else but it won't be replaced. Saying that he went away. We were short in time. We had to go back to the site. Finding this restaurant took a lot of time, and waiting for the dish extra time. And also there were people waiting for the seats. I couldn’t order another new dish. Besides, ordering another dish means I had to wait for another minimum 30mins. My friends would be done eating by then. I was also v v hungry. I called him again, and this time he asked the chef to deal with me, instead. The chef with a long white chef cap came. He looked tired, irritated and furious. The restaurant was crowded. I tried to make him understand that I don’t eat raw meat and that I didn’t know this dish would be raw meat. He was looking at me amazed/furious, I couldn’t understand his expression much. He said that this was the dish that I had ordered, pointing at the menu. It was a fine-dine restaurant and we should maintain silence. Even the falling down of a knife could be heard prominently, as everyone ate in silence. After arguing a lot, politely, in a soft voice and with lots of patience, from both sides, in broken English, he said, pointing his finger at the menu, ‘THIS…YOU ORDERED…’ and shrugged his shoulder. I said to him, ‘I CANT EAT RAW, PLEASE DO SOMETHING TO IT, ANYTHING BUT NOT RAW.’ ‘BOIL, FRY, BAKE, ….ANYTHING, JUST DO SOMETHING TO IT.’ I added. ‘FRY?’ his tone was a question. His neck bent. Forehead squeezed. ‘WHATEVER IS QUICK ….I’M HUNGRY’ I made all gestures possible to make him understand. ‘BOIL?’ ‘QUICK QUICK…..HUNGRY HUNGRY’ I started speaking like him. He took the dish and went inside without saying anything. He was pointing his finger at the menu, I was pointing my finger at the dish, saying ‘Do something to it. Anything, but do something. I can't eat raw', My friends told me later that I pointed at the steak and repeatedly said just one line, ‘do something’. Later they used to tell me pointing at food, on many occasions, ‘Pranamee, do something!’ He took the steak back, not happy at all and brought it back after like 10mins. It had steam coming from it. But it looked somewhat like the previous one. I looked closely. It wasn’t fried for sure. Most probably boiled. I took a tiny bite. It was edible now, but not tasty at all. As I took more bites, I realized, he steamed the whole thing. It tasted like the inner filling of dumplings. I don’t have a pic of the end product. I realized and accepted that day that I can’t eat anything and everything.