The waitress had just set down my entrée when I saw movement along my peripheral vision. I looked down at the floor and saw a small grey mouse, whiskers twitching, beady eyes scanning the brightly lit dining room. Intense food smells wafting from the kitchen must have tempted him from the safety of the storage closet. Resisting the urge to freak out, I carefully slid out of the booth, followed the mouse, and informed the waitress of the rodent situation. My movements scared the little creature and he fled back under the storage room door. Although the staff moved me to a different table, I couldn’t finish the meal. Needless to say, that property failed the evaluation. I’m sure there are many restaurants with similar problems, but unless I see it, I don’t want to know about it. When you eat for a living, ignorance is bliss.
Luckily, I’ve only had a handful of traumatic experiences in the four and a half years I’ve spent evaluating restaurants for AAA. Mostly, I experience mediocre meals with a few phenomenal meals here and there. I gained an appreciation for well-prepared, high quality food, but I’ve also developed some health issues like high cholesterol. I used to enjoy long drives and eating out in restaurants, but anything done with such frequency eventually loses its luster.
The life of a AAA inspector is certainly unique. AAA hires us to cover a specific territory and we drive to different towns in our territory to inspect and rate hotels, restaurants, campgrounds, and attractions for potential listing in the AAA TourBook. Once a property earns a listing, it is visited on a regular basis to ensure it continues to meet AAA standards and maintain member value. Generally, we spend a week or two out of town and return on the weekends, which means we are by ourselves on the road quite a bit. Even when we’re not evaluating a restaurant, we’re still eating out. I think being on the road so much is probably the hardest part of the job since it puts a strain on our social lives as well as our bodies.
In a typical work day, I show up unannounced to inspect a few hotels, evaluate a restaurant or two, then return to my hotel room to write up reports and little blurbs describing the hotels and restaurants I’ve visited. For a reprieve, I visit campgrounds or an attraction, which can be anything from a museum to a hike into the Grand Canyon. When I first started rating restaurants, every meal was an adventure, but after a few years, most meals became tedious- especially food I particularly enjoyed while growing up. Hamburgers, fried chicken, and steaks are now considerably less pleasing to my palate. On the other hand, I’ve learned to love more exotic flavors and textures- the tenderness of Japanese sushi, the sponginess of Indian paneer cheese, and the tantalizing heat of New Mexican green chiles. In fact, for every day dining, I prefer Asian, Mid-Eastern and New Mexican cuisine to the comfort food of my youth. For work, I tend to seek out more exotic restaurants for new listings to bring variety to the standard American, Italian, and Mexican restaurants put in the TourBook by my predecessors.
The thing I like least about my job is talking about my job. It’s not fun altering people’s perception of what I do. Often, they make comments suggesting that rating restaurants isn’t difficult work or that it’s fun all the time. Although I have a wonderful job, it’s still work- restaurant reviewers critique and test every aspect of a meal. During a typical evaluation, I’m busy testing the staff’s knowledge of the menu, making notes about the décor, and evaluating what shows up on my plate. Many people assume that if you’re eating out it must be a good experience, which is certainly not the case.
Recently, I was working in a small town where we only had a couple restaurant listings. I decided to try a Mexican restaurant a short drive from my hotel. My entrée arrived very quickly, which made me suspicious. I carefully cut into the enchilada, made with a flour tortilla, and took a bite. The chicken had the crunchy, petrified texture of overcooked-in-the-microwave meat and the tortilla had a strange soggy feel. Many restaurants use microwaves, but this dish was unusually horrible. If they had simply pre-cooked the meat & baked the enchilada for a few minutes, the results would have been much better. Whether the result of laziness or inexperience, the practically inedible dish did not come from a skilled cook and this restaurant did not earn a listing in the AAA TourBook. While this meal is seared into my memory, the majority of the meals I eat are forgettable.
Last year, I evaluated over 180 restaurants for AAA. This number doesn’t include all of the meals I ate on the road or the dining out I did on weekend with friends and family. Dining in so many restaurants has completely changed the way I feel about food and eating out. The most noticeable effect of eating out so often, is that my palate has changed. I’ve acquired a distinct dislike for the food at major restaurant chains. The poor quality food no longer excites my taste buds. Although this might have some positive effect on my health, it also forced me to grudgingly admit I’m developing into a food snob. Meals at average restaurants feel more like a chore, a job that needs to be done rather than something enjoyable. Instead, I highly anticipate the few restaurants serving fresh, high quality ingredients since dishes made from these items simply taste better. I also have a greater appreciation for home cooked meals. One of the best meals I’ve had recently was a quiche, salad, & gazpacho soup my friend’s wife made for his birthday lunch.
In order to make the job more interesting, I try to see if the chefs have the ability to turn something mundane, such as soup, into something magnificent. Soup is possibly the most difficult thing to make exciting. Talented chefs at fine dining restaurants are the most likely to succeed at this feat, but it’s truly rare. Out of the hundreds of bowls of soup I’ve eaten, only three stand out in my memory. I’m still impressed by something I sampled three years ago- the surprisingly sweet flavor of a chilled, pureed cantaloupe soup garnished with tiny bits of crystallized ginger and lavender blossoms. Two years ago, a clever chef magically transformed earthy, sensuous heirloom tomatoes into, possibly, the best soup I’ve ever had. During a recent meal, I ordered a soup sampler. The waiter presented me with finely chopped ingredients at the bottom of three espresso cups. He then poured a broth specific to each set of ingredients into each cup. Amazing!
When I tell my friends and family about these exciting soups, their eyes glaze over. It’s almost impossible to convey the delightful, divine feeling of experiencing a spectacular, perfectly prepared, artistically presented soup. In fact, it’s difficult to explain the delight of any meal eaten alone since there is no one to collaborate and expound on your experience. Creamy risotto with wild mushrooms, fresh pasta made from scratch, plump, buttery lobster melting in my mouth- these are all wonderful dishes I’ve experienced alone.
The most important thing I’ve learned through my job is that meals are most enjoyable when shared. It’s a simple, overlooked concept, but an important one.
