There’s the Panivore, and now there’s the Little Ruffian (a Speecho-American). Who knew that he too was panivorous. I had talked to him in the past, and he intimated that by comparison to his famous sibling, he would eat anything that wasn’t nailed down. So after CFL Grands Saturday, we all went together to a team dinner at India House, our usual haunt.
Let me put this in the simplest terms: the details of the Little Ruffian’s omnivore nature had been greatly exaggerated.
I had already decided what the Paniovore would be up to. A mango lassi and a poori would tide her over well enough, and she was willing to go for it. As we were looking at the menu, the LR explained that he had never been to an Indian restaurant before. Or, it would appear, any restaurant. So what do you like to eat, we asked, still believing that by comparison to the P’s bread and milk shake, he would be tucking into a virtual Babette’s feast by way of Mumbai.
Pizza, he answered.
No meats. No vegetables. No fruits. No dairy. For some reason Dave, the Speecho-Coacho, believed that he could convince the LR to have some sort of beef dish, but 1) the LR doesn’t eat beef, and 2) this was an Indian restaurant. (Remind me to get Dave’s recipe for his famous Passover ham.) It turns out that the LR will eat a potato or an onion, provided the moon is in Pisces, so I ordered him a potato-and-onion-filled dosa, which is about as bland as you can order at India House without the manager coming over and asking you to leave. Meanwhile other Sailors were ordering the usual dishes (plus a fantastic Indian calamari dish—excellent!).
When the dosa arrived—it’s a foot-long crepe stuffed with, well, potatoes and onions—the Panivore started picking uninvited at the edges (the crepe part uncontaminated with either potatoes or onions) while the Little Ruffian just stared at it for a while. Finally, he produced a knife and fork (thus settling a few side bets about whether he had ever handled either of them before) and cut off a smidge. And I mean a smidge. After an hour he put that smidge on his fork. This was followed by a team reading of War and Peace in its entirety, in the original Russian, by the end of which time the forkful of dosa was poised outside the LR’s far-from-open mouth. Finally, the maw was ajar, the fork was thrust into the mouth, and the food was taken in.
There was a pause throughout the restaurant. Conversations stopped not only at all the surrounding tables but also at the bar and in the kitchen, plus outside where the dishwashers were catching up on their hookah smoking.
No expression showed on the Little Ruffian’s face. He didn’t…hate it. But, well, he didn’t like it either. After a moment, he shook his head.
“Geronimo!” one of the Sailors yelled, and within seconds each had taken a portion of the dosa, leaving nothing in front of the LR but an empty plate garnished only with one soggy bay leaf he had warily pulled out of the thing before taking his one bite.
And then the poori arrived, followed by both plain and garlic nan. With that, brother and sister had found their nourishment, and I’ve never seen so much wheat disappear so quickly, or at least not since Stalin’s final Five Year Plan, but that’s another thing altogether. Every time the waitress walked by we put in an order for more nan. I understand they had to quickly hire an extra team of chefs just to keep up.
So, we asked at some point during the evening, are your parents like this? No, was the reply; they’ll eat anything. Which is why, whenever the young ‘uns are on the forensics trail, the parents are—you guessed it—out to eat. Apparently as soon as the kids are out the door, Mom and Pop head out to any restaurant they can find. Their middle name is Zagat. They’ll eat anything from sheep’s brains to worm butts.
I’m not quite sure where we should schedule our next team dinner. The Panivore sibs pronounced themselves well sated by all the available breadstuffs. And the rest of us enjoyed the usual menu of curries and whatnot, including that great squid. So maybe we’ll go back to India House again. The entertainment value alone was worth the price of admission. Next time we’ll see if the Little Ruffian will eat rice. Probably not, but one never knows. Then again, Indian rice has peas in it. The LR did look at the rice at one point and ask what those little green things were.
On the bright side, when these two go to college, imagine all the money their parents will save by not having to purchase the meal plan!
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