Jay Rayner: People who take ages to choose in restaurants just don't like food

I fully understand that making life choices can be tricky: what career to pursue, so you don't end up trying to saw off your own leg with frustration; which person to jump into bed with, so you don't find yourself sharing dampened sheets with somebody who tells you they think Hermann Goering was misunderstood and had some pretty cool ideas, actually.

Choosing what to eat off a restaurant menu is never tricky. It's not complicated. It's not like filing a tax return or getting North Korea to see sense or navigating the Kingston bypass. It's simple. There's a list of dishes. You read the list and choose the one that sounds nicest or, at a push, least nasty.

I spend an absurd amount of my working life in restaurants, choosing things off lists, and cannot help but marvel at the people who, asked what they would like to eat, flap their hands about like they're shooing away flies and mutter, “Ooh, come back to me last”. Why? What the hell are you waiting for? Divine intervention? A scorching column of light to descend from the heavens to illuminate the place on the sheet where it says “rump of lamb with aubergine puree”, the bloody dish that we all bloody knew you were going to bloody order anyway?

There is a simple truth. People who take ages trying to choose what to eat in restaurants don't like food. Not enough, anyway. They can't choose because they are suspicious of what the kitchen might be attempting to do to them. For them every dish is an elephant trap, specifically designed to make them look like the picky eater we all know they are. And don't try suggesting it's because menus are full of too many lovely things to make a simple choice impossible. I read more menus than you do. I have measured out my life in badly punctuated starters and grammatically incorrect mains. I can therefore tell you that the number packed full of glorious possibilities can be counted on the fingers of my left hand. After I've put fingers one to four through a threshing machine. And that last one turned out to be a big whopping lie.

If you have a proper appetite, menu choices are simple. You go out wanting the fish or the steak. That's the kind of person you are tonight. You may think yourself deeply discerning, but really, you have made this decision before you arrive, even if you don't know it. You turn up, look down the list, find the thing that most closely approximates how you're feeling. You choose it. If I were allowed to order like that we all know what would happen. I'd order the pork belly and pull my “so shoot me” face when everyone rolls their eyes.

As it happens I'm not allowed to do that. I have to find the thing that reads most like a car crash, full of mangled body parts: the deconstructed prawn cocktail with Marie Rose ice cream and iceberg lettuce jelly; the sweetbreads with the Amaretto veloute; the witty dessert made with beetroot. And if there aren't any of those, I have to find the thing that looks complicated. And if there is neither of those I get to choose the thing that sounds nice which isn't pork belly.

I can do all that in about 90 seconds, leaving the rest of the time free to force people to laugh at my crap jokes. That's just how people who really like their food work.

(The Guardian)