By Lydia Proschinger
Lydia@life-procoaching.com

Is there a simple recipe for your mental detox? Is it easy to let go of negative emotions? It is not but it is something that can be achieved.

Let me tell you a little something that’s not far from a quantum minestrone, or at least it did feel like it since I had a great mix of all sorts of feelings.

What would you choose for a light summer dish? Perhaps you would prefer some really light and tasty oysters? Perhaps with a glass of champagne?

Get comfy and imagine that that’s what I’m serving now? Take as much as you like and serve yourself. The customer here is ALWAYS king/queen and ALWAYS right.

This is not the case in ALL cafés or restaurants.

What now sounds like a joke happened to me in real life at a restaurant, some time ago. Well, I laugh now but not so much then.

Some people are more submissive than I am and tend to never ask for a change of plates when they are not served what they have ordered. Or they get what they have ordered but find a little something more in it and that little something more is not a pearl, and as such doesn’t exactly add value to the dish.

Well, I had been under the assumption that in a country where you have the right to freedom of expression, and where you also make use of it to some degree, you would not be denied a change of plate. Big deal I thought, I never touched it and it was not what I expected to order.

My company had accepted the idea I had to go to a really lovely restaurant I chose it since I had been there just the week before and it was so nice that I thought, great company, sunshine, let’s reproduce the same fuzzy feeling of that day at the same restaurant.

A lovely panoramic view would offer the worthy frame of what would be an exceptionally rare lunch at the select location of architectural splendour. I was looking forward to dessert. All was just perfect. We agreed again, it was the best choice of restaurant in the area.

We were going to meet there and luckily enough, there were plenty of tables when the girls arrived (I was a bit late). Only already upon their arrival they were rudely shoved onto a table around the corner. The manager grouped them like kettle and so when I arrived they were almost invisible. Seated around the corner of the elevator door, I had to take a long look around the restaurant. Since the room was practically empty, I suggested “Should we take a seat by a window so we can enjoy the panorama”? For no obvious reason, we were cornered and the others gave me a brief illustration that they hadn’t received the free choice to take any available seat. I thought it was odd but didn’t let it bother me too much.

I dismissed thoughts that would push me to go and ask. I wanted that moment to be perfect and relaxing. So, I focused on the choice on the menu.
I didn’t feel very hungry at first. I knew my dish would be a salad. The orders were made. I had found a salad that seemed to meet my palate’s delight and it did, half way.

When I’m saying half-way, I really did not know why but I was not totally convinced at first and that feeling, the little intuitive voice in me, did say “are you sure you want that salad rather than another one?”.

I could not find anything wrong with the description and so I ordered. Usually, once I’m decided about something, I rarely change my mind. It’s a trait that all successful people share. I’m very happy about my quality and make it a point that this situation, which you will now read on about, really represents an exception, not the rule.

Just after I successfully had killed that little voice in me, it went really quiet.
It was a matter of another thirty minutes that turned the perfect picture into a nightmare.
The moment I received the salad, it smelled so fishy that I didn’t get a second chance to think “I shouldn’t have ordered it.”

Perhaps had I studied gourmet cuisine I would have know that Caesar Salad has more than one version. One of them comes with and the other without anchovies and none comes with grilled chicken. I had to lean back and relax. I called the waitress. I simply didn’t feel like having to eat smelly salty fish on a hard boiled egg in a corner and surely not at that particular moment. All parameters agreed with my estimate of the situation, the others nodded and my stomach had confirmed that it completely ruined the pre-orchestrated harmony created around the idea of tasty grilled chicken on a fluffy cushion of mixed greens and colorful veggies.

I had visualized it and meditated about it. I missed something. Perhaps the affirmation? Reading the menu again, it clearly said nothing about anchovies. The salad I ordered was not supposed to have anchovies. So I asked for it without them and so the plate was taken back.

I received a replacement salad and I luckily recognized it as a salad. In the meantime I had again started to drool over the idea of the grilled chicken and I imagined that (almost like in a state of delirium when pink elephants start dancing in bikinis) the grilled chicken would materialize in the kitchen. The next plate I would receive would contain my beloved grilled chicken. I had jump started the digestive process. My stomach was aligned to the power of suggestion and Oh….ohhhh…

Although it was pretty clear to me that I would make my dream come true, I would roll my tongue around exactly what I had mentally attracted, nothing else, my mind was made up. It could not be any other way. It was just terribly wrong to serve Caesar Salad with anchovies; it HAD to be grilled chicken. I had never heard of any other option of the classic composition of Caesar Salads. (Notice the state of total obsession?)

You may think that it’s not a problem to produce a dead chicken in a kitchen of renown?

Well, obviously the chef did NOT think so.

Upon arrival of the dish, I received free of charge a very distant look from the waitress but she once again found me unhappy about what I received. The salad now was merely a shadow of what was already tiny and overpriced. It was the reductionist version of a ‘Easar ‘Alad because the Cs and Ses were entirely missing. No ChiCken, no fiSh. Oh, and not to mention that the green in the Salad was now missing as well.

It was for crying out loud but I remained strong. I briefly rolled my eyes. I gave an incredulous look back to the waitress, with the clear instruction to reassure me about my disbelief whether what I just received was a salad. She asked me now whether I wanted to change my order to something else. I said “Yes, please.” and checked if my pulse was still there. Oh, and I also checked the menu.

It took a few moments to compromise my mental image and during the embarrassing silence my meditation didn’t work. I realized: I had to compromise but it was my right. I rebelled, silently. I contained myself. I did not start yelling. Nor did I get rude. I remained as collected as a stamp.

My question is now, was I simply too stubborn? I don’t think I was. I was badly disappointed and perhaps should have left the restaurant at that point but by then my grumbling stomach begged me to stay. The others’ eyes begged me to just eat any shadow that would come to the table now and even if it carried the price of a diamond without the karat. Being sure that I would, the sounds of my stomach were heard at the king’s palace, the chiming of the instruments in resonance to it came from the nearby museum. I had to make a quick choice. ALL eyes were on me. I thanked the waitress for kindly bringing the plate with the replacement of the replacement salad and excused myself as I really did not mean trouble.

Guess and guess again: The new choice of salad had a HAIR!!!

I dared tell the waitress and already, the same manager that ordered my group to sit in the corner, came storming out of the kitchen. He apparently has a thing about grilled chicken. Only that I was to be grilled and I am NO chicken.

“For one, …“, he screamed tactless, not giving me a moment to exhale, “Caesar Salad ALWAYS COMES WITH ANCHOVIES” and before I could rebuke him and say “the salad came with a hair, Sir, so you must admit that by now nothing on the plate was “safe” to eat.” he unloaded uncontrollably all emotional dissonance perhaps stored up since child-hood upon the restaurant’s public, my company and myself. I was anyway ready to go, since so far I had not touched anything edible. I did not feel I was obliged to pay.

The perfectly happy ending came prematurely and because I refused to eat the salad with the dark decorative garnish that was on my plate for FREE. The manager started rolling the credits, we exited (it was the more elegant vision of what happened right then) vanished in the elevator door that shut with noise and from that moment on we were sure that the chef was still changing colors in rage, every second.

His fireworks were spectacular and he was not even ashamed in front of his other, meeker clients. Perhaps his shaking indicated that he should have done a serious detox? His words were indicating the same. One had to feel sorry for his staff and family.

It was beneath myself to enter into an argument. I left and decided to just not go back there in this life time and the self-imposed fasting would lead to enlightenment. Well, yes…at first I wasn’t happy at all. It was humiliating and extremely unjust.

I disliked the thoughts I was having and even more so what I thought I would have been capable of doing at that particular moment, in a provoked state. I really had to leave and gratefully my company supported me and left along with me and were even so kind as to pay for what they had eaten, and even worked on cheering me up. Finding words for it now, what had smelled fishy long before I had received a plate, was something I had attracted to myself. My intuition had warned me. I didn’t listen.

I really have no affinity to any versions of classic Caesar Salad since then but luckily I have now decided to do what’s almost impossible: I decided to actually tune into the taste of anchovies and overcome my aversion. I won’t do the same for the hair. Not only would I have difficulties of finding that exact brand, it also does not contain half the protein of the fish. I’m also not sure about the omega 3, 6, and 9 content of that particular hair. It’s a bit difficult to judge now.

I will admit that it took me a few days to make peace with the experience. I had been training my mental kung fu for a little more than a year back then but I was not defeated. I did not get aggressive, I did not spit back at him (he had a wet pronunciation of “Caesar Salad”) but my mind was still heavily weighed down because of the aggressiveness, a week later. The perceived humiliation was th worst. I say perceived because I don’t think anyone else felt that it was humiliating. But perhaps they did. I didn’t run a poll right then, so I would not know.

Fact is, I did a solid research after on the original, the classic, and ALL other variants of Caesar Salads. At least now I was informed and found out that I was right about one thing: it does not ALWAYS come with anchovies.

But what would it bring me to rush back to the restaurant to educate an obviously ignorant and badly tempered chef who had no idea of how to serve a Caesar Salad and create long-lasting customer satisfaction.

I won’t speculate about what else he was not good at but he was good at showing that in the jungle the lion AWLAYS is king as long as he ROARS loud enough.