Fish Head Fish Head

It’s another date-night dinner story, but trust me. This is a good’un.

There were three fish dishes on the menu and a fish special. You know how much Auntie loves her fish. I eliminated the one that was served whole, and then ordered pretty much at random.

The waiter brought me Finding Nemo’s bigger cousin. In his fishy entirety. The expression on his not-small face was pretty much what you’d expect after it’d been kidnapped and flash fried.

After quickly turning the plate so Cousin Nemo couldn’t see me, I gave Robert a piteous look. He said to the two hovering waiters, “Would you please ask the chef to decapitate that for her?”

The waiters shared a frustrated glance and refused.

“We can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because the chef just won’t do it. We’ve asked him before. He won’t.”

So my lovely, valiant, stalwart Robert reached out a massive hand and pulled Cousin Nemo’s head right off his fishy body!

Bam! Pow! Splat!

Okay, there was no noise, but there should have been.

The two waiters and I just stared.

Robert stood up. “I’ll just take this into the kitchen and give it to him myself then.”

Obviously, he didn’t. They stopped him. They grabbed Robert’s bread plate and whisked Cousin Nemo’s head away. I was left staring at what looked to me like a headless corpse. Robert was left staring at his entrée because his knife and fork had been on the bread plate.

When the waiter brought Robert new cutlery, he also brought me a new entrée. Turns out Cousin Nemo had been destined for another table. My real order was an expressionless (and delicious) rectangle. Phew all around.

But what I didn’t tell you is that the chef had been on my beloved Top Chef.

The show made him look like an arrogant dick. That could be editing, but refusing to help customers remove the head from their food seems dickish to me. In his defense, apparently when the waiters told him what had happened, he laughed and said, “You should’ve let him come back here.”

I liked that and I liked his food, and, in the end, I like this story.