Bacon: the Good Part of the Other White Meat

While reading all the comments to the infamous vegetarian post it brought to mind another incident that happened at Pizzeria Uno once and it involved someone eating something they didn't mean to eat. A table had ordered the delicious pizza skins® which were described on the menu as "a single serving of our signature skins complete with mashed potatoes, cheese, bacon and sour cream." Basically, it was mashed potatoes on a pizza crust and I subsisted off of those for three or four months because they were the cheapest thing on the employee menu. One night as I was ignoring my section and eating pizza in the kitchen I heard a commotion out in the dining room. Yelling, crying, the works. Of course my nosy ass immediately dropped my slice and went out to see how I could be of assistance. A table had finished eating their Pizza Skins and then realized that there was bacon on them. The table was Muslim. And pork was forbidden. How they ate a whole plate of something covered in bacon and not question it, I will never know. If you ordered something and it came out with crispy pieces of meat sprinkled all over it, wouldn't you ask what it was just to be certain they weren't rat poops or something? (At Pizzeria Uno, South Street Seaport, a very real possibility.) The family was screaming at their waiter for not telling them they had ordered something with bacon as if it was his duty to know what foods were forbidden by every religion. And even if he did know, did they say, "We are Muslim and we are ready to order now?" I doubt it. They were very upset. The manager intervened and did the only thing he could do; he comped it. That's right, the family had just devoured something that may send their souls to the eternal depths of hell and we took $4.00 of their check. I felt bad for them, I really did. The older woman was clearly devastated. How were we to know though? Shouldn't they have read the menu and asked what bacon was? If they sat in my station, I would've had no idea. I had only just moved to New York City from South Texas, so I only knew about Catholics and Southern Baptists and as far I know they are both allowed to eat heaps and heaps of pork. In fact, in the Baptist religion I'm pretty certain that ham is just as important as Christmas and Easter. The family left the restaurant awash with the fear of their God. They all looked petrified of the future. Well, except for the youngest girl. She was smiling. You know she liked the taste of the bacon. Evil or not, that shit is good.


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