by Jim Gaffigan
Triscuits
Now that I am an adult, one of my favorite snacks is cheese and crackers. At a certain point Jeannie, in an attempt to curb my cheese-and-cracker-eating behavior, started buying Triscuits because they are a “healthier cracker” and hummus, a dip made out of chickpeas. While not a perfect substitute for cheese, hummus is pretty good. It comes in a variety of flavors, and you feel less guilty about eating a seventeen-ounce tub of hummus than you do eating a seventeen-ounce tub of Merkts cheese spread. I should clarify that I don’t eat Triscuits because they taste good. I eat them because Jeannie makes me. Triscuits are just shredded wheat in cracker form. I always tell myself, These are mostly air. No calories in air. Hearing something is better for me always gives me license to eat five times as much.
Being a late-night eater, I can hardly fathom how many Triscuits I’ve consumed. I’m sure the number is in the hundreds of thousands at this point. I wish I were exaggerating. I eat them like I’m training for some impending Triscuit-eating contest. If there were a frequent-eating program for Triscuits, I’d earn so many miles that I’d spend every other weekend in Hawaii. I typically eat Triscuits only at night. On an average night I’ll do a stand-up show, go home, help Jeannie get our five children to sleep, and then sit down and eat five boxes of Triscuits. If I were murdered at my computer, there would most likely be a box of Triscuits in the crime scene photos. Lately Jeannie has only been buying Reduced Fat Triscuits, which are just like regular Triscuits but even less satisfying.
Wheat Thins
There are Triscuit people, and then there are Wheat Thins people. Everyone has his or her own brand of soda (Coke/Pepsi), ketchup (Heinz/Hunt’s), and toothpaste (Crest/Colgate). We are a Triscuit family. Wheat Thins also have a healthy perception, mostly because they are smaller, thinner, and, I guess, wheatier than most crackers. “Well, there’s even thin in the name!” I’m sure there is some delineating attribute that separates the Triscuit folk from the Wheat Thins folk. All I know is, Triscuit eaters are better-looking.
THE ROYAL TREATMENT
Eating in a fine-dining establishment is the closest many of us will come to being a king. We pick food from a list, someone makes it for us, and then someone else brings it to us. We don’t cook. We don’t clean up. We just sit there and people serve us like we are characters on Downton Abbey. When we order wine, the bottle is even opened and poured into a glass in front of us so that none of the peasants can poison us. I rarely get to go to fancy restaurants, but when I do I fully embrace it. Everything seems better in a fancy restaurant. Maybe it’s the five sticks of butter they use in every dish, but everything is simply more enjoyable. Even a glass of tap water is more pleasing. “Oooh, this is good water.” Being waited on makes us so self-important, we feel like we can critique the food. “How’s your appetizer? Mine is a little rich.” You can’t do this when you have a dinner at a friend’s house. “I didn’t care for the chicken. I don’t think we’re coming back here unless your wife takes some cooking classes.”
The royal treatment in a fine-dining establishment begins instantaneously when you are ushered to your table by the hostess or a maître d’. The maître d’ becomes the king’s guard, and the hostess is a lady-in-waiting who leads the way to your table with beauty and innocence. Upon arriving at your table you are greeted by your waiter, your personal servant for the night. Usually the waiter will tell you his name. Now that you are a person of royalty, you never give yours.
WAITER: (warm) Hello. My name is Phil. I’ll be your waiter.
YOU: (snotty) I’ll have the chicken.
I always feel uncomfortable when the waiter gives his name. I never use it. “I’m out of water, Phil. Yoo-hoo! PHIL?” Maybe they tell you their name to avoid your addressing them in other ways. “Waiter? Slave boy? Food bitch?—Oh, your name is Phil?”
Next you must determine what exquisite dish is worthy to enter your royal mouth. You are handed a menu, and the waiter begins to recite the chef’s specials like he’s announcing the lineup of your personal entertainment for the evening: “First the jester will perform a lovely …” “No! I don’t want that. Off with his head!”
The specials are presented in a semi-conversational manner. “Tonight we have a coq au vin that is flambéed.” Then there’s a pause. I usually nod, but I always wonder if I’m supposed to say something. “Um, pass. Next.” In an effort to be polite, I exert so much energy acting like I’m interested in the specials when I really don’t care. “That’s the soup of the day? Wow! I’m not getting any of these specials.” The term specials seems a little confusing. Is the chef trying harder on the specials? “He’ll cook the stuff that’s written down, but he’s not going to put any effort into it.” I often think if the dish is that special, why don’t they put it on the menu? By this time you’ve been handed your menu, which can come in varying sizes and shapes. Often the menus are unnecessarily oversize, so you feel like you are about to read a bedtime story to a young child. “Once there was a prime rib … for sixty-five dollars? That’s a little scary.” In general I don’t know what I’m looking at when I read a menu in fancy restaurants. I usually recognize every other word. “All right, that means beef and I think that is a green leafy vegetable I wouldn’t like.”
When it finally comes time to order, a wave of panic usually crashes over me. It’s a similar feeling to the one I have when ordering over the phone, but it’s much more intense because I’m face-to-face. What if I order the wrong thing? How adventurous should I be? How can I get Jeannie to order something I would like and then distract her so I can eat it? In an effort to avoid mispronouncing things, I’ll just point at items on the menu. “I’ll start with the (point) and then I’ll get (pointing) THIS.” If someone orders something I was going to order, I suddenly feel like I have to change my order. I know it’s irrational, but I don’t want that person to think I’m copying, or I don’t want the chef to get bored. The waiter is always there to provide advice and counsel. “Hey, waiter, you don’t know me, but what do you think I should eat? Is it time for me to get a haircut? It’s up to you, because you’re a stranger and I’m an idiot.” Occasionally a waiter will strongly recommend something from the menu. I always feel guilty not getting the waiter’s recommendation. “I know you want me to get that, but I’m going to get what I want because I’m paying, right? Why don’t you back off, Phil?”
Sometimes when out with a group of friends you are the last one to decide what you want on the menu. Throughout the ordering process you keep telling the waiter to skip to the next person. Now he’s back to you for the final order, and you still don’t know what you want and everyone is staring at you like you are holding all of them up and ruining the whole night. For me, this is when the real “order panic” sets in. I feel like I have to make this vital decision in less than a second, so I blurt out the first thing I remember, “Uhhh … burrito puerte vejerta!” Then it comes and it’s like a snail and an egg. I just stare at it in utter disappointment. “Hey! Anyone wanna trade?”
When you go out to dinner, it is customary to order an appetizer in addition to the entrée. The appetizer is just an excuse for an extra meal. “Let’s see, I will start with the eighty buffalo wings, and do you have a low-cal blue cheese? Because I don’t want to fill up too much.” It would be embarrassing trying to explain what an appetizer is to someone from a starving country. “Yeah, the appetizer—that’s the food we eat before we have our food. No, no, you’re thinking of dessert—that’s food we have after we have our food. We eat tons of food. Sometimes there’s so much we just stick it in a bag and bring it home. Then we throw it out the next day. Maybe give it to the dog.”
In most fine-dining establishments a basket of bread is placed on the table. I enjoy bread in everyday life, but for some reason when I go out to dinner I suddenly crave bread. “Bread! They have bread here!” Bread suddenly becomes an unusual and fascinating delicacy. “Oh, we should have bread at home. We’ve gotta get the recipe for bread!” I’
m not sure whose brilliant idea it was to give customers, often before they order, the most filling food for free.
MAN 1: You want a successful restaurant? Give everyone a basket of bread.
MAN 2: At the end of the meal, right? That way they leave full.
MAN 1: No, right when they sit down at the table.
MAN 2: Wouldn’t they just fill up on the bread?
MAN 1: Exactly.
MAN 2: But then they would order less food.
MAN 1: Exactly.
MAN 2: And I’d make less money.
MAN 1: Trust me.
MAN 2: Okay, I’ll do it.
Sometimes the bread in the bread basket is so amazing I can’t stop eating it. This is usually when the basket of bread is an assortment of different types of fresh, warm bread. “Well, I should try the pretzel bread. Well, I should try that pumpernickel thing. Well, I can’t skip the roll!” Also there is always that skinny breadstick in there that you have to eat because how often do you get to eat a skinny breadstick? I’ve eaten entire baskets of bread in restaurants. It can be kind of awkward asking the waiter for seconds on bread. “Yeah, can we have some more of that free bread, and can you cancel my entrée? I’m just going to load up on the bread and ice water. Are there other free things here? I prefer the free stuff more.”
Most of the time I really should cancel my entrée. I’m rarely hungry when it arrives. It’s often a little bit of a surprise when the entrée is presented. “Oh, I forgot about that. That’s the thing that costs forty bucks, right? Is it too late to un-order it? I guess I’ll just stuff it in while I think about what I’m going to eat for dessert.” Other times the wait for the entrée feels like an eternity, and when it arrives you are given a stern warning about the temperature of the hot plate. I sometimes wonder if we are waiting for them to make the plates. “The steak is ready, but the plate is still in the kiln.” On special occasions, while you’re eating your entrée the chef will approach the table to see how you are enjoying your meal. You can tell it’s the chef because they are usually dressed in some type of white karate outfit. A visit from the chef is a great honor and very generous because, after all, they are in the middle of their workday. It’s the equivalent of me stopping during my stand-up show and approaching a couple in the fourth row. “How do you like the jokes so far? Well, enjoy.” I usually awkwardly tell the chef everything is great, praying that he or she will go away. What else could you say? “I thought it would be better, but, hey, I’m here. Don’t worry. I’ll still pay.”
It’s usually after the second bite of your entrée that your waiter approaches and asks, “Can I interest any of you in dessert?” My first thought is He’s trying to kill us. I haven’t been hungry in an hour.
For some reason when you go out to dinner no one wants to be the one to order dessert. After eating a basket of bread and two courses of food, suddenly you decide that you don’t want to overdo it. There is usually someone who wants to share dessert. “Hey, you want to share a dessert? Let’s share a dessert.” Why don’t you get your own damn dessert? “Oh I just want a bite, just a bite.” Then the dessert arrives and they turn into a vacuum. Apparently it was a bite from a shovel. “Yeah, I have a bit of a sweet tooth.” No, you are a pathetic sugar fiend. I love the phrase “I have a sweet tooth.” I always want to say, “You’re ordering it for your tooth? That’s interesting, because it’s going straight to your butt. I think your butt owes your tooth an explanation.” I guess we all have our own way of rationalizing. In defense of the friend with the sweet tooth, no one has ever really needed dessert. Who was the first guy to ask for dessert? “That was a good meal. I’m full. You full? Good. Let’s eat a cake.”
Following dessert and that necessary after-dinner coffee needed to provide you with the energy to move so you can eventually leave the restaurant, the check arrives. Your waiter always seems to delicately place the check on the table like he had nothing to do with it. “Some guy over there gave me this to give to you.” The check is often in some type of leather folder like some kind of award. “What did I win?” “Bankruptcy.” When you see the bill, you are reminded why the check comes at the end of the meal when you are too full to run away.
It can be startling how large a check can be when you go out to dinner. “How can it be that much? Did someone order furniture?” I remember the first time I paid when I went out to dinner. I was in my twenties. I thought to myself, I have a job. I’m going to go out for a fancy dinner. Then the check came and all I could think was I’m moving home. I need my mommy and daddy to pay for everything. The whole experience of going out to dinner is amazing until that moment the bill arrives. Your relationship with your waiter has gone from “Who is this stranger talking to me?” to “He’s not our waiter, he’s our friend” to “This guy is the reason we won’t be able to send our children to college.” When the check comes, the illusion shatters. You were never the king. You were just another john in a fancy food whorehouse.
NON-ROYAL TREATMENT
Of course, most of my eating-outside-the-home experiences are not at fancy restaurants. I’m normally in a hurry to eat or else on the road somewhere, so usually I end up in a place where it’s less of an elegant adventure and more of a transaction. I’m just buying my food and sitting down and eating it. Sometimes I’m even standing up and eating it.
Homestyle
Sometimes after a show there’s nothing open except the place across from my hotel that offers homestyle cooking. I never really understood the appeal. When I go out to dinner, I want restaurant-style cooking. When I hear homestyle, I always think of some guy in his underwear standing next to a microwave. “You want me to nuke a hot dog for ya? I got some old Chinese in the fridge, but I think it’s my roommate’s.”
Dining Al Fresco
When people find out I live near Little Italy in New York City, they will often say, “Little Italy? You must eat well.” I never understood that logic. It’s not like they are giving the food away. Sadly, most of the food in Little Italy is not even the best Italian food, and most of the restaurants are tourist traps not even run by Italians. To maintain the illusion of authenticity, many of these not-really-Italian restaurants have quaint little outdoor seating sections on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant’s entrance. When the Italian-looking Albanian waiter asks you if you would rather be seated indoors or dine “al fresco”—literally, “in the fresh” (air)—like it’s some alluring vacation destination, you gladly choose the latter. After all, when pretending to be in Rome, do as the pretending-to-be-Romans do. Once you are seated, you quickly realize that “al fresco” in New York actually means, “Eating outside while you watch two drunk guys from Long Island yell at each other as a homeless man rummages through a garbage can.”
Diners
There are different types of diners, but generally they all embrace the simple approach to mediocre food. There seems to be an almost deliberate lack of creativity. Don’t get me wrong. I love diners. I love the booths, the subpar coffee, and the laminated menus that feel more like a catalog of every dish ever conceived of by humans. I usually want to ask, “To save time, can you just tell me the food you don’t serve here?” The diner menu’s description of food items is so hyperbolic that it borders on sarcasm: “World’s ‘Greatest’ Tuna Melt.” I especially love the diners that decorate their walls with actor headshots. “Wow, look at all these people I’ve never heard of who have eaten this mediocre food.”
Truck Stops
(See “Diners,” but add in mud flaps and showers.)
Food Trucks
The chuck wagon of today, the food truck always looks to me as if it wandered away and got lost from the rest of the caravan. “I’ve been separated from my group. I’m selling coffee to raise money to help me find them.” I don’t really understand the appeal of a food truck. It is a truck, right? Are we supposed to be eating stuff served out of trucks? If they give you food poisoning, they have the ability to flee the scene quickly. I call th
em poison-and-run trucks.
On Portlandia, my character worked in a food truck.
Street Fairs
In order to increase traffic and block the entrance to perfectly good restaurants during the summer, most large American cities have street fairs. Suddenly food that is normally eaten only by drunk people is being sold in broad daylight, and sober folk are lining up to pay too much for it. I like to think of street fairs as stationary parades that are pretty insensitive to the homeless. “Sorry you have to live on the street, but we’re having a PARTY!!! Can you move your box/house/bed thing? Thanks.”
The Barbecue
There are other times when you leave your home to eat and you are not actually paying for your food. I’m not talking about a fancy dinner party or a casual meal at a friend’s house. I’m talking about being invited to a barbecue. This gathering is a popular tradition in the summer months. You do not even have to know the host that well to be invited. As soon as it gets warm out, everyone suddenly has an uncontrollable desire to break out the grill and invite all their friends and friend’s friends over for an obnoxious amount of food in their backyard. People are usually expected to bring something to the barbecue. As a result of this disorganized assignment, there are never enough buns, and an inordinate amount of disgusting, mayonnaise-based salads complete with their own clouds of flies. I know people love an outdoor barbecue, but to me it just means “Let’s make the food more accessible to insects.” I mean, I enjoy the wind blowing a plate of potato salad onto my shirt as much as the next guy, but whenever I am at an outdoor barbecue, I always think, This would be so much better if it were indoors. I realize I’m a man and I should love outdoor grilling, but eating, cooking, or even being outdoors just feels counterintuitive to me. There’s just too much standing.
