Lies, Damn Lies, and Appetizers

“Self, just order and appetizer as your meal. All you need. All you want.” Did I listen to myself? No. No, I did not.

If you can go out to eat at an establishment that has appetizers, really good appetizers mind you, and not order anything but those appetizers, then you are a better one than I, Gunga Din. Kipling could rightly stare over his spectacles at me with disapproval as he sneers his quotable quote that “Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears” at my numerous examples of culinary pusillanimity.

“I’m just going to get an appetizer,” I lied to myself once again.

I’m the worst about this at my local Mexican joint. EVERYTIME I try to go with a strategery of “I’m just going to get the chips and dip and cheese sauce, I don’t need anything else. Then I talk myself into the menu items. Then I eat so many chips and dip and cheese sauce. Then I don’t fully enjoy my whatever the hell I ordered when I only really wanted to get my gastro-gringo on with the chips and dip and cheese sauce. Thus, what should be enjoyable ends in confusion, shame, disappointment.

There is always my most loathed chain restaurant in the eating out filament, Cheesecake Factory. Their appetizer menu has nearly as many items as Luther had…