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Part of what I love about being a waitress is the banter back and forth with the kitchen. I work in a small, privately owned restaurant so no computer system exists, and from reading your post, I'm glad my orders don't just escape into cyber-space. We 'fire' tables by word of mouth- pacing is definitely one of the hardest parts of being a server. Kudos to you, a regular restaurant eater, for walking in a waiter's shoes for a bit.

Mr. K- it's Mediterraneo in...New Jersey. We do have grilled octopus as well as lamb. And thanks for the advice everyone. Dining is certainly a subjective experience, so there are bound to be different opinions.

porker.

oh, that mug!

almost rotten apples

Oh god. There really are a lot of things I will not eat. There is not just one. But, here are a few:

~Roasted Peppers - I will not eat them or anything they touch. AWFUL
~Mushrooms
~Asparagus
~Water Chestnuts
~FISH (but I do eat the Shellfish family-MMMM)
~Anything that has nuts in it. Hate it when people put nuts in bownies! No. This ruins the taste. But man, do I love nuts by themselves.
~Miracle Whip

I could go on, but I will stop here...

W. Who wants to eat anill eat bananas and pineapple and peaches; but nothing with them as an ingredient.

I too, try to stay away from organs (except liver.) Oh, and lima beans.

Crabs have brains large enough to extract and serve?!?

Beets and turnips. Can't get around the metallic taste either. Used to hate brussels sprouts, but found a way to make them yummy (roast them!).

As to the "sea urchin roe" detester, I can guarantee you have never tasted nor even seen sea urchin roe. Uni, which is the food that comes from the sea urchin is, in fact, gonads. When you order sea urchin in a sushi restaurant, you are getting the testicles from the hermaphroditic aquatic hedgehog. But I know what you mean. Uni is not my favorite either. Nor are crab brains, which I was served many times when I lived in Japan. For that matter, any kind of brains--sweatbreads from cattle, etc.

Back to gonads. There's a lovely restaurant in Oklahoma City, OK called Cattlemen's. They serve a dish called "lamb fries." We ordered it and ate it up with relish without knowing it was, you guessed it, lamb testicles. All I can say is they were incredibly tender and tasty.

I will absolutely not eat beets, oatmeal, raisins (or any other dried fruit for that matter) and chunks of cooked carrots (when I use carrots in soups, I grate them or cut into tiny matchsticks, then they don't bother me, but I simply cannot bite into a chunk of a cooked carrot). I will not eat most cooked fish (other than Chilean sea bass, but only prepared in a certain way). Oops. it was supposed to be "the one food" I won't eat...[hanging head in shame]

I can completely sympathize with Adam. I waitressed for half a year and finally decided it just wasn't worth it and found a job not in the service industry. Not liking a job doesn't mean you're spoiled, it could just mean the job sucks. And it would be both stupid and masochistic to stay in a job you hated if you didn't have to do it. I considered myself a friendly, competent server and often went out of my way to do little things for customers. But so often people are cheap or just mean and will not tip well, regardless of how well a server does his job. Also, our kitchen was terrible and would constantly screw up orders or take forever to cook food, all of which I was blamed for. Waitressing is terrible and at times made me doubt that nice people actually existed in the world. Maybe it is better at some restaurants, but at the one I worked at, I wouldn't recommend a job to my worst enemy.