I would agree with most of my friends that I tend to be a food separatist. You know, we’re the people you see eating that work on one item at a time on their plate, sometimes even going so far as to physically separate the food items into discreet and noticeable areas to better delineate the differences.

So yes, I think I do tend to pick at one thing and then move onto the next. But after a recent experience I have new insight into why I, who knows about why others do it, might be like this.

Backstory of a short time:

I gave a little blood recently and I decided on having a good breakfast to fill me up after. I had eaten at this place called Savory Fare before and that’s really the only lasting memory I have of it. That’s still pretty good because even if I had just liked a meal I’ll forget about most places since it needs to be better than just liked. Samewise that I have to really dislike something to have a lasting emotion about not wanting to go back. Savory Fare must have struck just the right cord for me to have a pleasant association.

Back to the story:

So I stopped by. Duh.

The breakfast menu was up and the choices and prices looked promising. I’m a foodie. I’ll pay for good food but I’ll still feel the crunch if the meal didn’t meet my expectation as well as the ‘promise’ from the creators.

So I ordered the short stack of pancakes (vs tall stack) after asking one of the chefs about the size of the pancakes. Even the short stack was going to be filling. Along with that a small breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, and fresh fruit. I only wanted water but got charged for coffee. I took the coffee and went with it.

Here’s the picture of my meal:

Not bad looking to me. Before I get into the main topic I’ll digress into the food. Overall this meal is a 6.5/10. That might not seem good but that’s a good score for me. A 10 is a unicorn. That’s the meal you have after being lost and stranded after a plane crash and you’ve been living off the grubs found on the underside of bark. If you like and frequent said grubs, you might have a different opinion of a 10/10 score. This is my scoring here.

A 9 (or the highest score of a specific type of meal) essentially becomes the gold standard in my mind. For example, if I’ve only had something once and it was a 5, that’s still the gold standard, and I can hope I have it again and better the next time to raise the bar. I do recognize that it’s hard to give a score without comparing it to a similar food but you can also score just based on a lifetime of eating and tasting. Another example is the truffle fries I had at Branson(sp?) Island off of seattle. Those fries were a serious 8/10 and have set the bar so high on truffle fries that I’ve partially ruined myself since. Same goes with some great and well done nachos elsewhere that I’ve never found since. Digressing some more, you need a good layer of crispy nachos, good quality cheese and enough stuff that you don’t have just a single lump in the middle and you’re stuck with empty chips on the bottom and outside. I also don’t like when the bottoms chips get so soggy you need to consider breaking out a fork. That’s just wrong on literally so many levels (of nachos).

Going back to this meal, the pancakes were the best part. The blueberries were fresh or seemed fresh. Not a paste but actual real and round berries. The pancakes were light and fluffy. There was maple syrup or close to it in the cup but honestly the pancakes were so good that I only needed a light dab in the syrup to enhance the flavor of the pancakes.

The scrambled eggs were light and fluffy. Tasty enough I only used a small smattering of salt and pepper. I have a love/hate relationship with eggs. I love them at first but soon after eating them, the back of the mouth taste seems to dislike them. Meh. Who knows why.

The fresh fruit didn’t have the quality of ‘fresh’ fruit from the can. That’s a good thing. And no extra liquid pooling at the bottom of the cup.

The peach jam was too sweet for me and probably the lowest score of the meal.

The bread. I asked for sourdough toast. These almost made the lowest on the list but the garlic butter gave a +1 to eek it past the jam. Why so low? I like my sourdough more sour. And I like things toasted with just a hint of char or even a light browning. That’s my preference though. I know people that think their toast is done when it just gets warmed up.

Food critique done, back to the main topic which you’ve probably forgotten about by now of my being a food separatist.

Because overall the quality of everything was so good, I found myself going from item to item, BEFORE finishing any one thing.

It’s the quality. I get it now. In most other times I think I just eat up the least to most favorite of items so I end up with the best tasting at the end to help me forget about the things I didn’t like in the meal. There are caveats of course. If an item is warm and needs to be warm to make it taste better, that probably gets bumped up to a higher place on the eat sooner priority. Ironically though, if it especially tastes good and needs to be had warm/hot that might go first to make that lasting positive memory. I got lucky with the scrambled eggs today. They still tasted good throughout the meal, even when no longer warm. That’s a plus.

I think this newfound insight of mine will need more experimentation to know if this will hold over time but it seems very plausible to me as an explanation.

Until later,

SFA