I was at work the other day about to put a lemon wedge onto the glass of someones Diet Coke when I accidentally dropped it and watched the lemon fall to the floor. I sighed and bent down to pick it up to throw it in the trash because it would certainly be unsanitary to give a guest a lemon wedge that had fallen on the floor. I tossed the lemon into the garbage but then I thought about something. It's not like that lemon was even clean to begin with. No one in a restaurant ever washes the fruit. They just don't. When I am at home, I scrub the hell out of it because that piece of fruit has been all over the fucking place; in the hands of some migrant worker and then tossed into a bucket and then onto a truck and then into a shipping facility and then onto another truck and then into a grocery store. And you know some of the time it rolls around on the ground. Do you think that shit ever gets washed? Hell no. It's as dirty as the bottom of a shoe of a man who just peed at a public urinal. But in the restaurant world, we look at that lemon and think, "Meh, clean enough. Slice that bitch up and put it in a drink."
Am I the only one who believes that the bar fruit in a restaurant is one of the nastiest things on the planets? It's right up there with that bowl of peanuts that sits on the bar at your favorite dive that everyone eats out of. Germy, nasty, bacteria-ridden, skanky shit. Bon appetite!
17 comments:
Oh, dude. I was a bartender for years. That fruit gets shoved in the beer cooler or mouldy ice machine and taken out the next day. And the next and the next. It's radio active. Fark, did you ever wonder how old pearl onions can be before they just..vanish? I think this one dive I worked in had antique onions. And they served pickled eggs. Here, drunken puke that calls me "dear" have an egg, on the house. LMAO!
On top of the fact that lemons and limes aren't washed in some restaurants and bars, how about the fact that those lemon twists that people request in their martinis are nothing but pesticide-ridden pieces of fruit skin, unless the fruit has been grown in a home garden (extremely rare pretty much anywhere besides San Francisco)?
At the bar I work at, we keep the garnish trays down below in the well where only the bartenders have access to them.
And the one thing I will never order in a bar? Tomato juice. No way in hell.
Tomato juice can sit around for days and days. No one ever orders that shit so who knows how long it's been open.
when I used to work at the restaurant which had a togo/pickup area, our manager/owner/chef would pick out the chicken, beef, or even seafood out of a meal that had not been picked up after 2 hours and recook it into the next order. We of course would get bitched at if we ate the cold chicken meal that was growing with bacteria. That place was hell. I will starve before I return to the food service industry.
LOL at all these comments - these are (some of the) reasons why I'm really picky about where I eat out...and I try NOT to eat out if I can help it. Nas-tay....
LOL, this makes me think of our half and half. I hardly ever look at the date on those things before pouring. But the other day one of the bartenders checked the date and it was a month past... and I had used it just last night. Well then the bar back grabbed more from downstairs.. they were two weeks past and the manager told her to use it.. yuck.
Consider yourself bookmarked, Bitchy. You made me giggle within the first 30 seconds of reading this post.
I used to just toss the lemon in there, but then I started thinking about how hideous and nasty it was, so I generally will put it on the rim of the glass now. Unless somebody's being a bitch, and then that person can have every last speck of fecal matter and germ-ridden material floating in their fucking water with lemon.
it always make me laugh when they talk about "cross-contamination" in the biz. We have our lemons in a bucket that EVERYONE has their hands in all day and night long. The people who dress our plates on the line wear gloves and then reach down and grab an oval tray. They were told to change gloves every time they touch a tray, yeah like they have time for that. I dont eat out very often, first cuz i cant afford it and second of all i can cook it cheaper and more safely at home. I NEED A NEW JOB
How about saving customers bread from the tables? Croutons, anyone?
Marrying of condiments?
Saving the butter for the chef to clarify?
I always put the garnish on the rim of a glass unless I know the customer expects me to put it in the drink.
As for myself, I always order a drink without the fruit. Even if it was washed before being cut up, it gets touched every time someone reaches in to grab a wedge. Yuck.
We don't wash the lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, etc for any of the salads at the restaurant I work at. If the lemons have a sticker that says that they were grown in Mexico we have to wash them.
I do not want to know this.
go ahead and order that cosmo...or anything with a twist of lemon, which requires the server or bartender to take their fingernail and dig out the pulp of the fruit, yummy
Oohhhhh, thank you for the post. I live off of vodka martinis with a twist ...of lemon rind. Ugh. (There's no amount of alcohol that can undo that nastiness.) I'll just have the vodka martinis at home. No wonder I keep getting sick!
We do wash our lemons at work. It is the one place I have ever seen do it though.
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