I'm so glad that I hate strawberry syrup

A couple of nights ago, Hbf and I decided to splurge a little and go to a 'nicer' restaurant in Nha Trang. He had seen abalone advertised at a particular place, so we headed there in anticipation of a delicious meal (don't worry, I wasn't going to touch the abalone). We ordered a cheese platter for an appetizer (I love cheese!), and he got his abalone. I decided on a steak, since we were going big. We usually play cards while waiting for our food, but since this was a 'nicer' place, we decided to just chat. Blaaaaah (kidding)! Our cheese plate arrived, and to my horror, everything was covered in strawberry glaze. Bread, cheese, plate, nothing was saved. Inwardly I cried about my lack of cheese, but I decided to just eat around the nasty strawberry syrup and leave the rest to Hbf. He was delighted.



About half way through eating the cheese, Hbf stopped eating and started inspecting the cheese. I asked him what he was looking at and he asked, 'are these seeds in the syrup?' I didn't really look that close and told them they probably were, but he kept looking at the platter. 'I think they are ants, not seeds.' Sure enough, on closer inspection, the strawberry glaze contained hundreds of dead ants, not strawberry seeds. Ohhhhh thank you, thank you, picky tastebuds, for not liking strawberry syrup. We immediately sent it back but the damage had been done. Hbf ate ants. Lots of them. Haahahaa



10 minutes later our food arrived, and Hbf is able to thoroughly enjoy his abalone. I, on the other hand, had a rough start with my steak. They only gave me a butter knife, which I dutifully tried to cut my steak with, to no avail. I flagged a waitress down and tried to communicate to her that I needed a sharper knife, using hand signals and monosyllabic words. She seemed to understand, but a minute later she brought out another butter knife. Soo, now I had 2 butter knives and I still hadn't been successful at cutting a piece to eat. We found another waitress and tried to convey the sharp knife need, and she went back to the kitchen for a couple of minutes. When she returned, she brought me a very newly sharpened butter knife. Ummm.. Has no one ordered a steak here? Why do they not have steak knives? Hasn't anyone else asked for a knife sharp enough to cut a dang steak? I gave the sharpened butter knife a try and it worked well enough to make it through the meal. Mission accomplished, I guess.



After all that, they tried to charge us for the cheese platter. I told them we weren't paying for anything that has bugs on the plate. I'm not sure they knew what I was saying, but they took it off of the bill.