Do You Write Food Reviews On Your Finished Plate? Maybe You Should Start.

This is the story of a girl who finishes meals at her restaurant and instead of running home to her computer and type-scribbling a review on Yelp, inks her thoughts out on the very plate she was just served off of.

It’s a novel idea, one that ends up truncating your thoughts more than a 140-character Tweet would (unless you can scribble entire paragraphs in ketchup, hats off to you). It’s an immediate, uplifting (or…opposite of uplifting) way to make known to your chef what you thought of the meal he/she just prepared.

Could this story be the product of a slow news day? A true journalist, and an even truer publication would never admit to such heresies. I also wouldn’t know a true journalist if Charles Foster Kane himself slapped me in the face and took a piss in my morning coffee.

That’s besides the point. This isn’t a slow news day. In fact, this particular discussion could seemingly be more important than all other articles combined…or not.

Why? The reasoning is two-fold. The enigmatic girl who thought this would be a good idea ended up getting a free meal out of her antics.

The other fold? It’s a great way to interact with a chef that you would normally never see. This is particularly true with chain restaurants where the chef is someone paid more for his assembly-line skill and not necessarily for his culinary creativity.

When’s the last time you went to Olive Garden and “sent your regards to the chef” for that awesome Chicken & Potato Florentine Soup? Or went back to your assembly line employee at Chipotle, after your meal, and gave him a high five for marinating that chicken like a BOSS?

It’s the little things. Yeah, I’m sure the trolls reading this could give a rats’ ass about how well your local Starbucks Barista made your Caramel Macchiato, but maybe we’ll regret these missed opportunities in 30 years when that jovial Barista is now a coffee-pouring machine named Ms. Dos and it’s a computer generated face on an 8th generation iPad.

Of course, we can’t expect to get as lucky as this young lady did. But it might be fun to throw your opinion about the dish you just ate, on the dish you just ate, the next time you eat out. Good or bad, at least we’re interacting.

What do y’all think? Was this just a curiously obscure girl gesture that means nothing, or a serendipitous event we can glean from as socially advancing individuals?

Careful where you try this though. My mom was none too pleased last night when I sent the plate back with a Sriracha-inked: “Good try, but that hummus was a bit too airy and the olive oil overpowering.”

Pick and choose your battles.