Saturday, December 11, 2010

Lunch at Diner

I love Diner.  When friends are visiting I always try and take them for lunch (dinner is great too, but the chance of getting a booth diminishes in evening when it is so packed) and when I want to treat myself it's one of those restaurants that always seems to cheer me up.  It's also just one subway stop away so that doesn't hurt either.

But here is the thing, and I have written about this before, and here I am writing about it again because I JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND.  Here is a place that has a wonderful market driven, seasonal menu with lots of daily specials.  They are so fanatical about their meat that they source everything locally and even have their own butcher shop that features local grass fed meats,

They make sensitive choices by having things like Cane Cola, making an obvious statement that this is a place where you won't find diabetes and obesity inducing high fructose corn syrup, right?

So after our lovely Kale Caesar and a kick ass Cranberry bean soup with poached egg (the soup without the egg is vegan), my friend's $13 grass fed with Vermont cheddar cheeseburger and fries comes to the table along with a bottle of Heinz Ketchup! Yes the kind with TWO kinds of corn syrups, the Monsanto approved Corn Syrup rich ketchup: Heinz. The same Heinz who (because of ranting people like me) now have an organic version, so there is really no need in serving this shit.  So why does this great restaurant that is so sensitive and smart and tasty on every other level still after all these years serve it?  

Makes me crazy.  You know how easy it would be to make your own?  Or to buy the CANE Ketchup?
Why not serve Coke if you're going to serve Heinz?  I'm going to stop this rant mid rant because you've all heard it a million times and the fact is I go to Diner and just don't eat the ketchup, but some people do and that really is the point.  My friend did as you can see in the picture below.  Is it going to kill him?  No.  But that's not my point.  My point is that it makes no sense to be so particular about sourcing and butchering your meat, serving local and maybe even organic vegetables and Cane Cola and then presenting double GMO high fructose corn syrup ketchup.  It's just mind boggling to me.  And so easily fixed.  So why do they keep doing it?  What's the point?  

Rant complete.  I feel better now, thanks for listening.

2 comments:

Kurt Brown said...

When you figure this one out, can you tell me why there are overweight gym trainers next? That's always bugged me too.

Chris Skip in AVL said...

Enjoyed this post, especially the ketchup rant. I'm a ketchup loving condiment queen (ketchup rolled onto corn on the cob is my favorite blasphemy) so I've been watching labels and noticing lots of Non HFCS and organic options. In fact Hunts has gone totally natural, using only tomatoes, sugar, vinegar, salt, and spices.

http://food.change.org/blog/view/hunts_ketchup_ditches_high-fructose_corn_syrup

 
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