Few years ago, an ex-manager of mine who happened to be a vegetarian had a customary dinner with one of his prestigious client. The client, being a very famous hotelier had taken personal interest in selecting the menu at one of his restaurants. My manager, who clearly didn’t expect the kind of hospitality was very embarassed to say that he was a vegetarian and proceeded with the dinner, without having a clue of what he ate. After the dinner, out of the ear shot of his client, he asked about the menu to one of the waiters. The waiter, who was beaming with pride on serving such a tasteful menu told him that the main item was an aligator. He had further told him that what my manager ate was the tail of the aligator, which was supposedly the ‘tastiest’ part of that animal. I am not sure if that bit of info pleased him or not, but he did realise that overnight he had come a long way from being a ‘pure vegetarian’.
Being a vegetarian myself, my knowledge on non-vegetarian cuisine is limited to the basics. While browsing through a discount vouchers website recently, I accidentally came across a restaurant called Archipelago in London, who is supposedly famous for serving Kangaroo and Ostrich fillets. Thanks to the above mentioned incident, I know the extent to which people go to satisfy their tongue buds. So, I was not entirely shocked or awed at the menu. But one item, that this restaurant is also famous for is – hold your breath – chocolate dipped scorpions. Eeek… they have a picture of that stuff in their website. Didn’t know people eat scorpions and all. Well, when people can stomach snakes, scorpions aren’t that bad. At least, in size. But I couldn’t digest it. I meant the thought.
